Other times it was popping in to see Caleb Turner next door, working on his astonishing, intricate dies, or Sid Cole upstairs bent over at his peg, fastening shining gems into the clasps of rings. Sometimes it was tiny fragments of ruby, diamond or emerald. Others were set with semi-precious stones: delicate, glistening piles of pink rose quartz or malachite green, soft white agate or topaz.

She was coming to love this busy, productive household. Mrs Sullivan, the cook, was a bit of a stick but Margaret managed to get along with her all right. The maid, Fanny, was only a couple of years older than her. She was so chatty – as an excuse for long intervals of leaning on a mop handle and only active in the jaw department – that Margaret sometimes had gently to remind her that it might be time to get back to work.

The other person who she met in passing in the house was Jack Sidwell, who seemed to do a tremendous amount of running up and down the stairs for no purpose that Margaret could understand. There was also a lad called Horace who worked for Jack, but they hardly ever seemed to set eyes on him. She still felt embarrassed every time she met Jack because of her faint on the tram and the uncomfortable memory of him holding her from behind on the pavement. But Jack seemed even fuller of blushes at the sight of her and after a terse, ‘Morning!’ or ‘All right?’ he fled up or down the stairs, depending. It had become clear that it was Annie who Jack was sweet on, though any attempt he made towards her met with extremely short shrift.

‘Oh, he’s got his eye on you, that one has,’ Uncle Eb had teased Annie the evening she had so brutally dismissed Jack in the hall. They were at table, with plates of boiled beef with carrots. ‘He’s a good lad – got his own little business, yer know . . . He’s a bit out of practice with the ladies, like – but you could make a good marriage there . . .’

Annie’s look of scorn could almost have burned a hole in the cloth.

‘Marriage?’ she said, sitting bolt upright, eyes fixed intently on her uncle. ‘Oh, no – marriage is not for me.’

Uncle Eb sat back, confounded by this. ‘Well, I’ll be . . . What’s wrong with marriage?’

To Margaret’s horror, Annie announced, ‘Marriage, for a woman, is to be a man’s chattel. Which is something I have no intention of becoming.’

‘Annie!’ Margaret said, mortified.

Her uncle and aunt were so busy staring at Annie that they did not see Margaret’s blushes. Annie was the absolute end, she thought furiously. She did not know Annie’s views had gone this far – what an insulting thing to say to a married couple! And wasn’t marriage supposed to be the pinnacle of human experience? What on earth had got into her?