With Maura’s words in her ears, Peggy took a deep breath and, looking up, presented her bravest face. Mr Heartfelt avoided looking directly at her, pushing back wayward and unusually long strands of hair over the top of his bald head, flattening them into place with the palm of his hand. Peggy’s heart sank. Mr Heartfelt, unlike his name, was not kindly. It was a cruel trick. His face was extraordinarily long and thin. He wore a knitted Fair Isle sleeveless jumper over a crisp white shirt with a maroon tie fastened so tight his Adam’s apple protruded over the top. He carried a buff-coloured folder in the hand that was not concerned with his balding pate.

Peggy’s eyes rested on the folder, knowing that her life and that of her parents and grandparents and those who had arrived through the gates of the Clarence Dock in 1848, during the time of the Irish famine, lay in that folder. They had come straight to the docks and every one of them had been employed by the dock board ever since. The house they lived in had belonged to her mam and da and to theirs before them. For over one hundred years, since Nelson Street was built, Peggy’s ancestors, all hard-working dockers, had lived there and the rent book was passed down from the eldest of one generation to the next. She was about to alter the course of her family history and all because she had married a man her father had begged her not to.

Her heart sank at the expression on Mr Heartfelt’s thin face. She thought of the last time she and Maura had been here together; they had laughed on the way home, Maura making fun of Mr Heartfelt all the way. ‘Why the long face, Mr Heartfelt, it’s only the rent?’ Maura had joked, mimicking the way he looked and spoke and the laughter had been such a tonic that Peggy had felt much better. Today, however, he did not greet her with the smile he always had for Maura and went straight to the point.

Peggy tried desperately to speak, for something about the look in his eyes had rung an alarm bell and she instinctively knew she had to ward off his words with some of her own and her mouth began to engage before her brain had time to think.

‘H-hello, Mr Heartfelt, you wrote me a letter—’ There was a loud crash and the ping of a bell from the direction of the counter. Peggy almost jumped out of her skin and stopped mid-sentence. She looked back at the receptionist, whose smile was openly mocking. The noise had been made by the typewriter carriage as she’d slid it forcefully along to the end.