‘Old family stuff,’ Sybil told her. ‘Heaven knows what’s in there! The siblings won’t bother with it. It’s hardly been touched for years.’

Sybil’s five surviving brothers and sisters were scattered widely from Perth in Australia to Cape Wrath in Scotland. Only one lived anywhere near – a brother in Bournemouth. She seemed to have a regular correspondence with them all, but they scarcely ever saw each other.

It was in this cluttered storeroom, after ferreting about a bit, that Sybil had found the material that Katie made into a frock for her. She had been very pleased and admiring of Katie’s sewing. And one day during the great freeze, when Katie came home, Sybil announced, ‘I’ve been having a clear-out – found some things to burn. There are chairs up there that are full of worm, and I never want to see them again, ugly old things. So there’ll be some extra firewood for a start. There are still a few logs out in the garden. If we could get Mr Jenkins busy with an axe . . .’

Geoff Jenkins, the accounts clerk, did not, on the face of it, look the axe-wielding type, but he dutifully set to the next Saturday morning with surprising energy and produced a heap of chunks of wood to keep them going.

When Sybil and Katie stepped outside to see how he was getting on, Sybil suddenly stepped close to Katie and said, ‘Take a glance up at next door’s window.’

Katie looked up, as instructed, to see Mrs Arbuckle at the back window, staring fixedly at Mr Jenkins’s striving figure.

‘Susan-fodder, d’you think?’ Sybil murmured.

‘Isn’t he a bit young?’ Katie objected. Geoffrey Jenkins must have had ten years on Susan.

‘Oh, that’s never stopped her yet,’ Sybil said.

‘That’s a fine specimen of a man you’ve got there,’ Katie said, imitating Mrs Arbuckle’s breathless voice.

Sybil guffawed, then called out, ‘Fine work, Mr Jenkins! Keep it up – I’m most grateful to you!’

Geoff Jenkins straightened up, pink in the face, and smiled. He looked as if he was rather enjoying himself.

‘Makes a change,’ he said. ‘You know – from sitting at a desk.’

‘You’re being watched, by the way,’ Sybil said. ‘From next door. I expect she wants you to marry her daughter.’

The look of alarm that spread over his face sent both of them inside in a fit of giggles.

‘Poor Susan,’ Sybil spluttered. ‘It must be rather like having a shark for a mother!’ Her face sobered. ‘Actually, though, Katie – I rather think it’s you he might be interested in.’

‘Well,’ Katie said tartly, though she had realized this, as Geoff Jenkins had started paying attention to her, ‘he can forget about that right away.’

At the height of the freeze Mrs Gudgeon was taken seriously ill and had to be moved to Dudley Road Hospital, where she died two days later. They tried to be kind and helpful to the bereaved Mr Gudgeon.