‘But isn’t that what you want?’ she asked, surprised. ‘Being here, running the firm and that?’

‘Oh – yes. I s’pose so,’ he said carelessly. ‘We’ve all got to do our bit. I’d have liked to join up really. Lads my age: it doesn’t feel right not going, even though you know really that you’re well out of it – well, if it’s anything like the last lot, anyway. Dad survived because he was running the firm. My uncle was killed out there in France. So I know that if we’ve managed to dodge Mr Hitler’s bombs, we’re the lucky ones being here.’

It hadn’t done him any harm, she thought. Good job, sporty car.

‘The only thing is . . .’ He was talking seriously now, with a boyish air of vulnerability. ‘In the long run it just feels as if it’s all been mapped out for me and I don’t have any say in it.’

She was touched that he would admit such feelings to her. But, genuinely puzzled, she said, ‘Isn’t it like that for most people?’

Simon Collinge gave a slightly bitter laugh. ‘Ah, I can see you’re a realist, Miss O’Neill, not a romantic.’

‘Am I?’ she was saying, not sure if this was a compliment, when Lena Crosby pushed the door open, her nose pink with cold. Finding Simon Collinge on the edge of Katie’s desk, her expression stiffened further into one of sour disapproval.

‘Your cigarettes,’ she said, holding them out with a martyred air as if they were something rather distasteful. ‘Lucky they had some at that place in Digbeth.’

‘Ah – thank you very much! Much obliged,’ Simon Collinge said, taking them across to his own desk. As Lena went to take off her coat, he turned to Katie and winked, and she had to hide her smile.

That evening as she left the works, it was already dark as usual. She was walking along towards Bradford Street when the car drew up alongside her.

‘Let me give you a lift home?’ He had leaned across and wound down the window.

‘Oh – no, it’s all right. ‘I’ve only got to go to Digbeth to get the bus. There’s no need for you to go out of your way.’

‘It’s not out of my way, I don’t think. Somewhere off the Stratford Road?’

‘Yes, but . . .’ She began to cave in. It would be so nice to get into a car instead of freezing at the bus stop. And did this mean . . . ? What did it mean? Was she being pursued, or was this just a more general friendliness? How were you supposed to tell?

He was jumping out and coming round to open the door for her. ‘Come along – hop in.’

The car smelled nicely of leather inside. She realized just how comfortably off the Collinges were. She had heard through the firm’s gossip that Simon did not live out in Solihull with his parents, but in a little house of his own, which his father had bought for him.