Sissy sighed – and looked to her right. The music was coming from an altogether different place. Visible through iron gates that gleamed with polish, stood a vast and well-kept community wrought in honey-coloured stone. A manufactory, yes, but one envisioned as a new Jerusalem. Brand new terraces of pleasant little cottages. A chapel. Municipal baths. And, rising over it all, a grand, astonishing red-brick chimney, though no smoke came from out of it. The name of this idyll? This model community? Why there it was, wrought in fine iron curlicues over the glittering gates: ‘Sweetville’!

‘Bed of roses, that place, so they say,’ murmured Sissy. ‘Double wages and a home for life.’

‘If you’re one of the lucky ones,’ complained Abigail. ‘And that’s not us.’

Unexpectedly, Sissy laughed and then began to sing. ‘It’s the same the whole world over, it’s the poor what gets the blame … !’ She gripped her friend by the arm. ‘I happen to believe, flower, that you make your own luck in this world!’

‘Still a factory, though, in’t it?’ said Abigail. ‘What’s so special about it?’

Sissy sighed again. ‘Paradise, that’s what it’s like in there, Abigail. Paradise. As I shall see, Monday week.’

‘You’ve not …?’

‘Aye!’ Sissy took out a letter, its pages softened with much re-reading. ‘They want to see me!’ So saying, she strode on, beaming with excitement.

Abigail Blench sighed. Perhaps one day it would be her turn. She trudged on.

*

‘There’s no discouragement, shall make him once relent … ’

It was a woman’s voice. A trifle cracked, a trifle tuneless no doubt but strong. And that was one thing none ever doubted about Mrs Winifred Gillyflower. She sat on a cushioned stool before the immense pipe organ, a vision in black bombazine, bony fingers scuttling like white crabs over the yellowing keys. Mrs Gillyflower’s perished-apple countenance was wreathed in smiles as she sang: ‘His first avowed intent – to be a pilgrim!’

The parlour suffocated in over-ornate decoration, from the heavy drapes to the floral wallpaper – covered in citations to Mrs Gillyflower’s scientific expertise – from the thick Turkey carpet to the menagerie of stuffed animals, watching her through sightless eyes, each imprisoned beneath a gleaming, freshly polished bell-jar. Here was the albino crow Mrs Gillyflower had bagged one wet Wednesday in the Peak District. Here was the Pine Martin with the vicious nip who had cost her the tip of one finger. Here was the Orang-u-tan – bought from a legless lascar and shipped in from far off Sumatra. He hung by a skinny orange-furred arm from a preserved branch, forever condemned to observe his mistress’s musical recitations through dusty glass.