She and Lizzie stood as Miss Hinks instructed on one of the machines. She could see that Lizzie already seemed familiar with the work.

‘These are blanking presses.’ Miss Hinks nodded towards the nearest black iron machine on the bench. They looked much like the presses in Uncle Eb’s workshop, with a round counterweight at the other end of the handle. She directed her instructions mainly at Annie, and went over to pick up a flat strip of metal. ‘So what we’re doing is pressing out blanks to make the nibs. Some are brass and some steel – these ones are steel. You press out the shape of the nib like this.’

She laid the strip in the machine and tugged the handle briefly back and forth and showed them the nib-shaped hole in the strip.

‘Keep ’em as close together as you can – the less scrap left the better.’ She picked up the remains of a strip, showing them the thin metal lacework remaining after as many blanks as possible had been cut from it. ‘The blanks drop down into here.’ Reaching under the machine, she pulled out a flat, nib-shaped piece of metal and handed it to Annie. It was rough at the edges and felt almost weightless in her hand.

‘These ladies,’ she waved an arm towards the feverishly stamping women all about them, ‘can cut out a hundred and twenty or more of these a minute when they’re really going. There’s some can do a hundred and sixty a minute.’

Annie stared at her. ‘That can’t be possible.’

‘Oh,’ Miss Hinks’s expression grew a fraction grimmer, ‘it’s possible. For them that are used to it. Any road – your quota’s thirty-six thousand in your shift – you won’t make that today, nor tomorrow neither. If you still can’t make it in a week or two you’ll be out that door, all right?’

Annie’s mind was calculating furiously. Thirty-six thousand a day! That was . . . Nine hours, so in an hour it would be four thousand . . . Per minute, sixty-six . . . Still more than one a second on average, but at least not as bad as one hundred and twenty . . .

‘Most of this lot’re on piecework,’ Miss Hinks was saying. ‘Which you won’t be until you’ve got quicker at it. You’ll be on eight shillings a week to start. So –’ Her face softened fractionally. ‘You two’re lambs to the slaughter today.’

Annie did not like to admit that she did not know what piecework was. But another problem had already presented itself.

‘Go on, then – have a go,’ Miss Hinks ordered.

‘I’m sorry,’ Annie confessed, as Lizzie went to her press. ‘But I’m not sure I can. I’m left-handed.’