They were both smiling up at her as she looked from one to the other.

‘We’ve come to ask you summat, Esther lass,’ Ma began. ‘Go on, Enid, you ask her.’

Enid giggled nervously. ‘I – we was wondering if you’d let Katie be me bridesmaid . . .’

At this Kate jumped up and down clapping her hands. ‘Oh, Enid, Enid! Oh do say I can, Mam.’

‘Now wait a minute, Kate,’ Esther said. ‘Be still, child. Let me talk to Enid.’ She turned back. ‘I don’t understand, Enid. What about your own sisters?’

Ma Harris and Enid exchanged a knowing look and shrugged their shoulders.

‘That’s the very reason we’re asking your Kate,’ Ma said. ‘And we’re asking Danny Eland to be a page boy. Just the two of them, that’s all we want. Enid dun’t want a lot of fuss and you should hear the squabbling that’s been goin’ on in our house over who’s to be her bridesmaid. She can’t have ’em all and so we thought this was the best way to settle it. That way none of ’em’s noses is out o’ joint!’

Ma and her sayings, Esther thought irrationally, and then she murmured, ‘Danny, you say?’

It was strange how circumstances seemed always to contrive to bring those two – Kate and Danny – together, however much she might wish it otherwise.

Kate was tugging at her mother’s skirt. ‘Mam, do say I can be bridesmaid and wear a pretty dress, can’t I?’

The smile on Enid’s mouth faltered. She glanced at her mother before saying quietly, ‘Yes, lovey, you shall have a pretty dress.’ There was a slight emphasis on the ‘you’ which did not pass unnoticed by either Esther or Kate.

With a child’s directness, Kate said, ‘Why, you’ll be having a lovely wedding dress, won’t you? Like in the picture books?’

Enid shook her head a little sadly. ‘It ain’t practical for the likes of us. You can’t wear a wedding dress for anything else afterwards, Katie.’ She forced herself to laugh. ‘Can’t see me helping Walter at the anvil in a wedding dress, can you?’

The wistful tone in the girl’s voice was not lost on Esther.

‘Wait here a minute, Ma – Enid. There’s something I think I ought to show you.’

She turned and ran upstairs to fetch the wedding gown that was all but finished apart from the final seams. It’s only sensible she knows, Esther told herself, and besides, I can fit it on her properly now.

The look on Enid’s face as Esther held up the gown before her was thanks enough. Tears of joy ran down her face and all she could say was, ‘Oh, missus, missus!’