‘Maybe I’ll go to Villach. Or Vienna.’

‘Don’t go to Vienna. You’ll get eaten alive.’

‘What do you mean?’

Sophia dropped an armful of wet sheets into a basket. ‘You say things young girls shouldn’t say. You say the first thing that comes into your head.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘You need to be more careful. Half the girls in Vienna are on the game.’

‘I still don’t know what you mean.’

‘I saw you kiss that young doctor.’

‘I wanted to say thank you. He’d given me some ointment for my hands.’

‘People get the wrong idea. If you go round kissing men.’

‘I don’t “go round” kissing anyone.’

‘Go to your stupid café in Vienna, then. Come back pregnant.’

Carina became ill that winter and was taken into the poor wing of the hospital. The years of alcohol had damaged her organs, though the doctors seemed to think she could survive if she gave up drinking. Carina was happy to be in a warm bed with no worries about food or money. When she became delirious, seeing creatures on the wall, they gave her medicine to make her sleep.

Soon after her seventeenth birthday, Lena found work with one of the men she had once hoped might be her father – in the shop that sold woollen waistcoats. He also stocked leather trousers, dirndls, jackets and shoes. His name was Herr Thaller and he was paternal enough. He paid her very little, but he had given her the job without asking for any references and it was better than working in the laundry. The rash on her hands improved once she was no longer in contact with detergent.

To begin with, she was kept busy at the back of the shop, stocktaking and sweeping up while Herr Thaller dealt with the clients himself. He went out to lunch every day to a brewery where they served fried chicken and potatoes at long tables; and during his absence Lena was allowed to look after the customers. She was worried that she wouldn’t be able to work out the right change, but she found that just enough of Herr Kaufmann’s arithmetic had stuck in her head.

Talking to the women was the part of the job that interested her, discussing what best suited them, or if there was something not in stock that she could order in. It appealed to the part of her that had liked staring at the schoolroom floor: a sense that something worthwhile could be found in patterns, beyond the logic of numbers and the giggling chalk. She made drawings on the back of paper bags to show the women customers what she meant and they told her the names for the things she drew, pleats, darts, hems and gathers. When she had been working six months she had saved up enough to buy a dress she liked, cream with damson-coloured embroidery. She managed to get her hair under control with a ribbon of the same colour and one of the customers complimented her. Lena persuaded Herr Thaller they should offer at least a small selection of dresses that she’d seen in catalogues from Vienna. He secured some good terms from the manufacturers and let her go ahead with her own rail, though he told her it would never replace his traditional lines.