All the houses on that side of the road were shops or businesses, and the rest of them comprised the solicitors and chemist either side of the premises, along with a cabinetmaker, a hairdresser, a dentist, a grocer and, at the far end of the street, a butcher. None of the other properties had bay windows, and neither did the houses on the other side of the road. Besides the large room in which Ruby was standing, there was another smaller one which had apparently been used as a storeroom, and beyond that, a tiny back hall from which a steep staircase rose to the one-bedroomed flat. On inspecting this with Edward and Clarissa, Ruby had been amazed to discover that besides the tiny kitchen, small sitting room and bedroom, the flat boasted the modern innovation of an indoor closet, bath and washbasin. The estate agent had told them the bathroom had been installed in what had been the box room only the year before on the insistence of the owner’s married son who had been worried about his mother’s increasing frailness. She was well over eighty, he’d continued, but had been determined to stay in her home and run her little business, but unfortunately a bad fall resulting in a broken leg and other injuries had put paid to that. The annexe in the yard still housed an old privy and wash house, and at the end of this the coal bunker.

Despite the renovation and refurbishment that would be involved, Ruby had fallen in love with the old shop. She had learned from the estate agent that the old lady had been born in the bedroom of the flat, as had her mother before her, and the premises had been used as a sweet shop for well over a hundred years. She didn’t think the house would mind its new role as an exclusive dress shop, though. She felt, even from that first time she had stepped across the threshold with Edward and Clarissa, that it had welcomed her.

She shook her head at her fanciful thoughts, smiling to herself. But it was true. Edward had helped her with the buying of the property by recommending a solicitor friend of his who had dealt with the legalities involved, guiding her through the process of putting down a credible deposit and taking out a mortgage with all the paperwork that had generated, but the house had been hers long before the sale was completed and she’d received the keys. At least that was how she felt.

But now began the real hard work. Ruby took a deep breath and then let it out in a satisfied sigh. She had finished at the laundry for good on Saturday lunchtime and today was Monday morning, the first week of her new life.