She stood up and moved to the edge of the pavement. Some days merely standing this close to the road would be enough to trigger a panic attack, but today she was fine, and she crossed without incident. There was no predicting how she’d be from one day to the next. Some days, the road posed no problem at all, but on others it was all she could do to stand within ten feet of it. Not knowing how she was going to react made her more anxious still. The whole thing was a downward spiral that she couldn’t seem to crawl out of.

Audrey was still muttering under her breath, her consonants spiked and vicious, when Pip reached her, her heart sinking. It was going to be a long shift if her boss was in a bad mood before the day had even begun.

She girded her loins and mustered a smile. ‘Morning, Audrey,’ she said as brightly as she could manage.

Audrey looked up and rolled her eyes heavenwards.

‘I don’t know why I bother putting up a sign. I really don’t. Do they think we have nothing better to do than carry their stuff around for them?’

In fact, they didn’t have anything better to do. It was a matter of a few feet from the door to the room where they sorted the donations, and Pip couldn’t understand the hardship that Audrey seemed to feel so keenly, but she knew better than to pass comment.

‘I’ll bring it all in,’ she said instead. ‘You go and put the kettle on.’

Audrey gave her a tight little nod, but no smile, and kicked a plastic bag out of the way so she could open the door and step inside.

Pip began to shift the bags from the door to the table one at a time. So little happened here that any study of time and motion was irrelevant, and if she made five journeys and the task used up five times as much time then that was a bonus. The contrast between this and her life in London couldn’t have been more marked.

She opened the neck of the first bag and peered in. Its contents were neatly folded, which boded well. Audrey would be pleased. She liked to get decent-quality stock, although dresses like these from Marks & Spencer or Next weren’t Pip’s idea of decent. Her mind flew to the racks of designer labels that were hanging, unworn, in her wardrobe in Dominic’s flat. Rose had far more sophisticated tastes than she allowed Pip to have, and none of her London finery had made its way up to Suffolk. Now she was here, she had adopted a bland and anonymous style: jeans paired with high street tops just like everyone else wore and, as the weeks rolled by, she could feel herself slowly morphing from Rose back into Pip.

She hoisted the final bag on to her shoulder and prepared to carry it inside, but then she saw that there was a small cardboard box hidden underneath. Boxes tended to be filled with knick-knacks, the sort Pip had rarely seen before and which fascinated and repulsed her in equal measure. Mass-market moulded glassware; cheap plated jewellery, the base metal showing through and destroying any illusion of authenticity; and badly chipped and mismatched cups and saucers, fit only for landfill, that someone had thought others might be prepared to pay good money for. The whole enterprise continued to astound Pip by its very awfulness. But emptying boxes filled with ugly things was infinitely preferable to sorting through overwashed (or in some truly revolting cases, underwashed) garments. Plus, there was always the outside chance of uncovering some treasure.