‘Let me take your coat, Margaret,’ Charles said. ‘We can hang it to dry.’ His voice, in the gloom, sounded warm and reassuring after his grandmother’s rather frosty reception of them.

Gladly she slid her coat off and Charles shed his. He opened the door beside them.

‘I’ll drape them over the chairs in here so we don’t have damp things hanging all around us in the back. Do go through.’

He indicated the room at the back into which the old lady had disappeared, and carried the coats into the front.

Margaret found herself in the small but cosy room in which Elsie Barber evidently did most of her living. So much so, in fact, that there was a makeshift bed along the back wall of the room away from the window instead of a couch. Elsie was hurriedly pulling at it to make it more respectable. The top cover was a very old, sandy-coloured blanket. The head of the bed just fitted in next to the range to the left of the window, and there was a small table, two wooden chairs and an armchair. Elsie’s few crocks and pans were piled higgledy-piggledy around the foot of the range. The room smelt of cooking, of urine and of some slightly rancid food.

‘I’ve nothing much for you,’ she complained.

‘Please don’t go to any trouble,’ Margaret said. ‘After all, we came unannounced and we shall not be stopping for long.’ She would have liked to be able to give a proper explanation of their sudden arrival, but was aware that she did not have one.

‘Can’t manage the stairs these days, with my hips being as they are.’ Elsie Barber turned from the bed, gathering her shawl about her. In her pale, watery eyes, wispy white hair and the boniness of her face, Margaret saw a vulnerable, uncertain old woman looking back at her. She felt immediately sorry for her. Elsie Barber had the look of a countrywoman and reminded Margaret of various elderly women she had known in the village at home.

‘May I help you in any way, Mrs Barber?’ she said.

‘You can fill the kettle in the scullery and set it on.’ She pointed and Margaret went to collect the kettle. She jumped as she turned, finding that Elsie Barber had come up close behind her.

‘I have to live in ’ere, see,’ she whispered. A strange, suspicious expression had come over her face which Margaret found disturbing. ‘There’s odd people about, see. I’m all right in this room of a night – lock myself in, safe as houses.’

‘I understand,’ Margaret said, her heart pounding with alarm, though she was not sure why. But the woman’s wild look frightened her. ‘That’s very wise of you.’

‘It is.’ Elsie backed away. Her face softened, as if relieved that she had been understood. ‘Some of us know things, see.’