‘I can’t let you do any more,’ Ella protested. ‘I’m living here free as it is and I feel guilty enough about that already.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t. I’ve worked all my life and had no one else to spend it on except myself. Besides,’ she smiled to assuage Ella’s prickly pride, ‘when you get this marvellous job as somebody’s secretary, I’ll know where to come if I’m short.’

Ella laughed, but touched Peggy’s hand as it lay on the table. ‘Oh, Aunty Peggy, you are good.’

The older woman blushed, patted Ella’s hand and said, ‘There’s a letter for you behind the clock.’

Ella jumped up and covered the space between the table and the hearth and fished out the letter. ‘Is it from . . .?’ she began, but her face fell when she recognized Janice Souter’s girlish scribble.

She returned to the table more slowly. ‘I thought perhaps Grandpa might have written.’

‘He will,’ Peggy said confidently. ‘Don’t let your tea go cold.’

Janice’s letter covered three pages, the first of which was full of grumbles at Ella:

Fancy going off without me and to live in Lincoln as well. Don’t you remember? I said to you if you ever left home, I’d go with you. We could take a flat together and have some great fun. What do you say? Have you got a job yet? I expect your Aunty Peg could get you fixed up in that posh store where she works. Do you think she could find me a job too?

Ella smiled and shook her head. Same old Janice!

She’d write back and explain why she left and tell her that she wasn’t working but was still a student. She’d have to be careful how she worded her letter though: she had visions of Janice turning up on Aunty Peggy’s doorstep ready to move in too.

*

‘Now have you got everything?’

‘I think so.’

‘Don’t forget. Book into a nice small hotel and mind it’s clean.’

Ella grinned. ‘Yes, Aunty Peg.’

‘And ring Rita next door when you get there. You’ve got their number, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, Aunty Peg.’ Far from being irritated by the older woman’s fussing, Ella found it very comforting to feel someone cared enough to worry over her.

‘I hope everything goes all right.’

And then the train was pulling out of the station, and in a flurry of ‘goodbye’ and ‘take care’, she was on her way to York.

She found a guest house on the long road overlooking the racecourse. The view from her window stretched out over a field dotted with trees to the course itself, the oval white-painted fence of the track and, beyond it, the grandstand in the far distance. To her left as she leant out of the window were the square towers of the Minster, rising proudly above the clustering city.