She had a work basket, of course. They were asking for socks for the soldiers. She could knit as well as the next girl (providing the next girl was also a careless amateur). She pointed out rugs that needed beating and floors that needed scrubbing, but soon found that her interest irritated the maids. They could see the grime as well as she could, and since they were the ones charged with removing it, her notice only appeared rude. The garden needed tending to. In fact everything needed attention. Not least Vivian.

On the fifth day she was sent a surprise. The maids skittered about excitedly as a pianoforte was unloaded from the back of a horse-drawn cart. Mrs Rosebend fussed that the rain had ruined the instrument; Vivian doubted she was that lucky. So this was how Aubrey thought she could use her time. Practising. Why was he so insistent that his wife become musical? She hoped to God he was still training, because she wouldn’t want to wish ill on a man in battle.

Vivian considered another walk to the grocer’s to enquire about a man for the garden, and she supposed she must ask about a piano tuner too. Although the streets were patched with puddles, there was a gap in the clouds, and a shop was a shop was a shop, no matter how utilitarian or cramped. She found her hat and purple kid gloves, although she feared her fashion statements were a fruitless declaration here in the land of aprons and mob caps.

She was greeted with a level of excitement. ‘Good morning, Mrs Owens. Are you well?’

‘Quite well, thank you. Are you?’

‘Can’t complain.’ And yet he did. For a full ten minutes she listened to a list of Mr Walker’s aches and pains, his woes. He had a touch of arthritis, possibly gout too, he had an ingrowing toenail that was bothering him, he couldn’t digest tomatoes easily. She smiled politely and kept her eyes trained on the lips of the rotund grocer as though she’d never heard anything more fascinating in her life, managing not to hint at her exasperation at having listened to the same inventory of ailments several times already in their very short acquaintance. A thin line of saliva tapered from his top teeth to his bottom; she scrutinised it, fascinated, wondering when it would snap. One or two other customers came into the shop but it didn’t slow down Mr Walker. He was on a roll.

Vivian risked slipping her eyes away and studying the other patrons. One was a child, who took the opportunity of Mr Walker’s extreme obsession with his own health to slip an apple into her pinafore pocket; the second was a woman about Vivian’s mother’s age. Normally Vivian was deeply distrustful of women in their forties and fifties. She found them snobbish, judgemental, sanctimonious and damning. They seemed to find her careless, irresponsible, giddy and improper. Their age terrified her; her youth threatened them. She prepared herself for a cool, meaningless exchange peppered with barbed criticisms and vainly proffered unsolicited advice. She had been faced with so many grudging and pessimistic women of a certain age that she thought all she could do was hold her chin up and wait for the onslaught of negativity. She wished she’d kept her eyes on Mr Walker’s saliva.