Ted dipped the tip of his forefinger into the water and waited to see if a fish would come for a nibble as he pondered his response. ‘I wanted to,’ he said slowly, ‘but I don’t think I’d have gone through with it, not when push came to shove, because I’m not the only one with something to lose.’

She looked at him curiously. ‘Oh?’

He leaned back on his haunches. ‘My dad also works for your father, so I’d have been putting his job at risk as well as my own, summat I don’t think he’d thank me for.’

Olivia nodded wisely. ‘Like I said before, you wouldn’t be the first to come round here shouting the odds, and unfortunately you wouldn’t be the first he sacked and evicted on the spot.’

‘That’s pretty much what I thought he’d do,’ Ted said sullenly. ‘It’s not fair, he holds all the cards.’

Olivia shook her head sadly. ‘I know, but at least you can get away from him after work. Think about me – I have to live with him.’

‘If he treats you like he does us, then you have my sympathy.’ Ted glanced in the general direction of the house. ‘Mind you, your house is big enough to get away from him.’

Olivia smiled absently. ‘Is your house really infested with rats?’

Ted frowned. ‘What?’

‘Only I heard you mention something about rat-infested …’

Ted gave her a lopsided smile. ‘All right, so maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m sure it would be if my father didn’t keep on top of the repairs.’

‘He’s good at mending things then?’

Ted nodded. ‘He’s a mechanic in the factory, so he fixes the machines when they break down and makes new parts when they need him to. He’s always been handy like that.’

Olivia thought of her own father, who never got his own hands dirty. ‘He shouldn’t be doing the repairs himself – my father should be responsible for that.’

Ted’s eyebrows rose fleetingly. ‘I don’t think your father would agree with you on that one. According to him, if we live in it, we should be the ones that keep it in good order.’

Olivia tutted softly. ‘Sounds about right.’ She hesitated. ‘Would you mind awfully if we stopped talking about my father?’

Ted grinned. ‘Not at all.’

They spent the rest of the afternoon chatting idly as they watched the koi swim lazily around the pond. Ted told Olivia about the house he and his father shared in Fisher Street, not far from the Campbells’ factory where they both worked, his father Craig as a mechanic and Ted as a general dogsbody. When Olivia asked about Ted’s mother, his tone changed from light-hearted to serious as he relayed the story of how his mother had died from dysentery when he was a small child.