Noting to herself that she must buy paper and pencils, she went into number twenty-four. The door of the front office was only open a crack now. Stopping in the dark hall for a moment, Margaret listened, curious to find out if there was any sign of the lively visitor, or of Daisy’s father, but the middle door was closed. She could hear the low rhythm of male voices from behind it, but there was nothing to see, so she headed up the dusty staircase to Caleb Turner’s workroom.

‘I think it’s a job for someone in Germany,’ she told him. ‘Well – perhaps two jobs, Uncle said.’

Caleb Turner turned from his work table to look impassively at her and said, ‘Oh, ar? I’ll be over in a tick, then.’

Margaret departed downstairs wondering what exactly would excite Caleb Turner.

The hall seemed a fraction lighter than when she had come in and, reaching the bottom of the stairs, she saw that the door to the middle room was standing open. It seemed whoever had been in there was no longer and all was quiet. Perhaps the men had gone to the workshop at the back, she thought – including that Mr Carson. She saw him again in her mind’s eye, striding along the street.

She glanced at the front office, the door still just open a little. No one seemed to be moving about, and in a moment of curiosity, she stepped up close to the middle room. This must be where Daisy’s father works, she thought.

Through the gap in the doorway she could just see the fireplace and, at the far end, under the window, a bench with tools scattered on it. Beside them rested something bright, its curves accentuated by the light falling on it. She felt herself take a sharp breath and gathered her arms in, one hand going to her neck. To her astonishment a lump rose in her throat and a prickle of tears in her eyes.

There was something in the shape that made her move closer, narrowing her eyes to make it out. The object was a silver bowl, eight or nine inches across, the rim of which had been skilfully turned out and flattened. Even Margaret’s unpractised eye could see from the way the mottled surface of it caught the light, that it was hand-beaten. It rested on a silver base about half an inch deep.

The thing was magnificent – its shape, its proportion and simplicity, its subtle sheen – so beautiful that she could not stop gazing at it. How lovely, how very lovely, her mind kept repeating. She felt full of joyous excitement, as if she had been offered a revelation of something divine – beauty for the sheer, celebratory sake of it; a testimony to loveliness in the world. It was an object into which someone had poured their very soul.