But she walked back into the office with her face composed, wearing a cool, workday expression.

‘Here you are, Mr Collinge.’

‘Thank you,’ Simon said curtly. He stood bending over some other document and not even looking up. It was Mr Collinge senior who thanked her with a faint nod.

Though she had given herself a stern talking to, Katie still spent the afternoon feeling angry and rejected and didn’t even so much as look in Simon Collinge’s direction if she could help it. She left the office at the same time as Lena Crosby, with a curt ‘Goodnight’ to both the men. After Lena had gone up Bradford Street to catch her bus, Katie walked on through the cold, mizzling dark, her hands pushed down into her coat pockets, feeling very sorry for herself. Just one look, one little wink across the office when no one was looking, and she would have known everything was all right. Couldn’t he even have managed that? And so much for wanting to see her again – he seemed to have forgotten she existed! Was he just playing with her? A lump came up in her throat and she was so lost in feeling sorry for herself that she didn’t hear the footsteps hurrying to catch up, until his hand was on her shoulder, swinging her round.

‘Hey – I thought we were going out for a drink!’

Who said? she thought crossly. When did we say that?

‘Were we?’ she said in a neutral tone. ‘I wasn’t sure. You seemed to be very busy still.’

A gaggle of workers from the shop floor was approaching, now that the shift had changed, and Simon took her arm and steered her round the corner.

‘Never too busy for you, K-K-K-Katie. Come on, let’s go somewhere warm and away from here.’

Still angry, wanting to punish him for the way he’d hurt her today, she felt like telling him she couldn’t come. She looked away from him, along the factory walls.

‘I can’t just come out whenever I like, you know.’

‘Whyever not?’

‘It’s my mother – she’s sort of an invalid.’ More lies tripped off her tongue, so easily. ‘I have to be home quite a bit to look after her.’

‘Oh, I see.’ He sounded a bit put out. She could just make out his long, pale face in the gloom. ‘You never said. Well, look – just one drink. Surely the old girl’ll be all right while you have a quick one?’ He put his hands on her shoulders. The blackout had its uses, she thought – they didn’t need to worry about people seeing them. And he couldn’t see those miserable tears in her eyes. ‘I don’t think I can stand it if you go off now. D’you have any idea of the agony of having you so close to me in the office all day? Wanting to come to you and put my arms around you?’

Katie felt her ruffled feathers being smoothed down. She began to relent, which of course was what she really longed to do.