As Annie chatted about her morning, Daisy continued drawing. Each picture was of an object or shape – the vase, symmetrical shapes, curves and spirals and curlicues – as if the draughtsmanship of the jewellery trade was bred into her as closely as breathing. She seemed happy to be there, sitting in the company of women, and sometimes as they chatted she looked up from one to the other of them, gave a little smile and went back to her work.

‘How’s your father, Daisy?’ Aunt Hatt asked.

‘All right, thank you,’ the girl said, not raising her head.

Aunt Hatt rolled her eyes affectionately, as if to say I’ll never understand these people, and relaxed even further, closing her eyes.

‘Have you been to see the Pooles?’ Margaret asked Annie. ‘How’s the baby?’

Annie had been giving them bulletins each evening as to how the family were getting on. As she asked the question, she saw Aunt Hatt open her eyes again. At first their aunt had been baffled and worried as to why Annie was calling on a family in some run-down backyard. Gradually, though, Aunt Hatt had been drawn into concern for and sympathy with the Pooles’ troubles – especially when she heard about what had happened to Mr Poole, and about the poorly baby, Nellie.

‘Yes – she’s come through it,’ Annie said happily. ‘She’s taken some milk today and she’s starting to eat again. She’s a lovely little thing. Course, now it’s the end of the week they’ve got Lizzie’s wages.’

‘And yours,’ Aunt Hatt pointed out.

‘Well, yes – but mine have gone on paying off what they owed,’ Annie said, frowning.

Margaret watched her sister’s intent face, thinking with a painful pang of their parents. Here was Annie, a born missionary who somehow did not want to be one – or at least, not the way the Church defined it. Margaret was the one who had assumed herself to be cut out for mission work. But she felt put to shame, often, by Annie’s passion on behalf of others. And now, increasingly, she felt cut adrift from all that had gone before, from what she had thought she was destined to be.

‘I just don’t know how they’re going to go on,’ Annie was saying. ‘The younger children are so little and even the boy, Den, is only nine. He’s small for his age but he looks a tough little nut. The parish won’t help, with Lizzie working, and so much falls on her. But if Mrs Poole went out to work there’d be no one to look after the children.’

‘What about her mother?’ Aunt Hatt asked. ‘Can’t she lend a hand?’

‘She died in the workhouse, when Mrs Poole was born,’ Annie said. ‘I don’t think she has any other family.’

Aunt Hatt’s face sobered even more. ‘Dear, dear,’ she said sorrowfully.