I wanted the green-blue smock dress, though. I could imagine arriving at Daphne’s in it and sophisticatedly picking my way through the groups of guests. Not for the first time I wished that Auntie Viv could at least have been around to back me up, if I couldn’t have a mother like everyone else did. I squared up to Ted now. ‘I’ve seen the dress I want.’

But he was already looking past me and out through the shop’s tall, narrow plate-glass window. It had the word Scentsation lettered in a half-moon shape on the glass and just above the central T, like an exotic blossom balanced on a black stalk, I saw a woman’s face looking in at us. She stood serenely for a moment and then strolled to the door. Ted was already there to hold it open for her.

The customer looked groomed and poised and rich. She had silver-gilt hair cut in a smooth bell that curved in to her jawline from beneath a neat pillbox hat worn perched on the back of her head. The hat was made from the same lavender-blue tweed as her suit, and her court shoes and handbag were fine grey suede. Under her arm, the woman carried a little white dog with the hair on its head tied in a topknot with a blue ribbon bow. I guessed that this vision exactly matched the way Valerie saw herself in her best daydreams, but by comparison Ted’s assistant now looked over-made-up and her suit appeared cheap and crumpled next to the pale soft tweed. Valerie stood back against the shelves but I was trapped in the main part of the shop. I huddled against the mirrors to make myself as inconspicuous as possible, but then I moved my eyes and saw a little open-mouthed turnip face reflected from a hundred different angles. My hands, pressed flat against the mirrors, were leaving damp palm prints on the glass.

‘Mrs Ingoldby,’ Ted murmured.

‘Hello,’ the woman said carelessly. She put the dog down beside her slender ankles and the creature wandered straight over and began sniffing at my shoes.

‘Can I help you with anything today?’

‘I was thinking,’ she answered, ‘about the scent we discussed. My own scent. I would like … something exotic. But not, you know, obvious. A fragrance that will murmur my name, never shriek it.’ She wasn’t looking at any of us as she spoke. She was picking up green and white perfume boxes and little glass bottles, and putting them down again, haphazardly, after the briefest glance.