The woman looked at her with tired, defeated eyes.

‘Do – do you know what happened to the school?’ Kate nodded towards the demolished building. The woman glanced in the same direction. ‘Bomb fell on it,’ she explained, rather unnecessarily, Kate thought. ‘Awful, it were. My old man’s an air-raid warden. Several girls and three teachers were buried. He ’ad to dig ’em out.’

‘Were they . . .?’

‘Dead? Oh, no – only the headmistress was killed. T’others were hurt, like, but they’ve got over it.’

‘How dreadful!’ Kate murmured automatically, but she was thinking, ‘Miss Denham is dead.’

‘Oh yes,’ the tired woman was finding new vigour in her recounting of the event, now she had an interested listener. ‘A lovely woman, she was, the headmistress. All the girls loved her . . .’

‘Loved her? Miss Denham?’

The woman’s gaze was mystified. ‘Who? Who did you say? Don’t know no Miss Denham. No, the headmistress was called Miss Ogden!’

Kate gasped. ‘Oh, no!’

‘Knew her, did you?’

Kate nodded, sick at heart. Immediately she felt contrite, ashamed of her moment’s fleeting glee at the thought that Miss Denham had been killed. Now she was being punished for her uncharitable thought for unkind Fate had taken the woman who had shown her genuine kindness.

Kate continued up towards the cathedral. In the peaceful atmosphere she knelt in prayer for Miss Ogden. Outside again, she walked back down Lindum Hill in a daze, hardly knowing where she was going. Then she found herself in a street she knew very well. In the nine years she had lived in the city she had walked along it hundreds of times to and from work. Kate smiled and quickened her pace.

The door opened upon Peggy. She stared at Kate for a moment and then gave a squeal of delight.

‘Kate! I hardly recognized you in your uniform . . .’ Peggy flung her arms round her and gave her a swift hug, then stood back, holding Kate by the arms. ‘Let me look at you. Oh, you do look smart.’ Excited as a young girl, Peggy almost dragged the laughing Kate through into the back room. ‘Mother, look who’s here!’

Although she passed hurriedly through the front room, there was still time enough for Kate to notice its tidiness with a stab of disappointment; not a paper pattern nor a length of fabric to be seen – not even a stray pin. When she stepped through into the back room, she saw why. Mrs Godfrey was sitting near the fire hunched in her chair.

‘Mother’s not so well these days, Kate, since we lost Father,’ Peggy explained softly, and Kate nodded, understanding. The whole family had mourned the kind and gentle man. ‘But she keeps cheerful,’ Peggy was saying, ‘and she loves visitors.’