I’ve got to get out of home, she thought, as she sat on the bus the first day back. I can’t just stay walled up there forever. For the first time she was furiously angry with her mother, without feeling guilty about it. Yes, Vera carried a terrible grief, but why should she, Katie, give up her whole life over something that wasn’t her fault, and all of which had happened before she could even remember?

‘Talk about a face as long as Livery Street,’ Maureen said when she walked into the works to clock in. ‘You all right, Katie?’

‘Oh, sorry, yes!’ Katie said, pushing her lips into a smile. She hadn’t realized she was walking around with a frown on her face.

‘That’s better,’ Maureen said. She was always rather motherly towards Katie. ‘By the way,’ she leaned closer, ‘today’s the day he starts, isn’t it?’

Katie had forgotten about the arrival of Mr Collinge junior, but when she got upstairs to Mr Graham’s office, it was to find that things had already changed. Pushing open the door, she saw Mr Graham and another slender, athletically powerful man, both with their backs to her, bent over the table under the window. At another desk opposite hers, she noticed that a second shorthand typist had been ensconced in the office as well. They certainly hadn’t wasted any time.

In those seconds she felt the eyes of the typist boring into her, and took in that she was a thin person with honey-blonde, wavy hair and sharp features. Her gaze did not look in the least friendly. Then the two men straightened up and turned round. Mr Graham was looking his usual unkempt self, and made the young man beside him stand out even more in contrast. Katie took in that, as the other women in the factory had said, young Simon Collinge was the image of his father. He was tall with dark-brown hair and a healthy-looking face, which would one day fall into lines resembling those of Mr Collinge senior, attractively shaped lips and grey eyes that had a quizzical light in them, as if he found life in general rather amusing. Though he was smartly dressed, his tie was already slightly adrift, which made him look appealingly absent-minded, rather like an artist who forgets about his clothes.

‘Oh,’ Mr Graham said in his usual unexcited tone. ‘This is Miss O’Neill, who works for me.’

‘Morning!’ Simon Collinge greeted her cheerfully, but then, seeming unsure what to do next, held out his hand. Katie, blushing, reached forward to take it. Her hand was held in a surprisingly strong grip. ‘How d’you do?’

‘As you can see, Mr Collinge has joined our department,’ Mr Graham said. Katie could tell he was not best pleased about this, though it was always rather hard to tell when Mr Graham was pleased about anything. ‘He’s been at Herbert’s in Coventry after leaving the University . . . ’ This last word was uttered with barely disguised contempt. ‘And now he’s come back to join those of us who’ve been scholars at the University of Life and Hard Knocks.’