He smiles at her over his drink – the studied, conspiratorial smile of their alliance against the older generation. He would never dream of revealing it to his fiancée, but he knows, of course, how Harriet has come by her job at the Gazette. Gerald let it slip one evening at the club. Harriet had begun to read literature from the suffrage movement – radical pamphlets written by the Pankhursts and their followers from before the war, and such like. Worse, she started spouting their opinions. She had declared that she wanted to have her own career. Gerald had decided that the wisest course of action was to set her up at the fusty old Gazette, which offered little more than local gossip dressed up as news, rather than to continue to see her head turned by those lunatic women. He had had a quiet word with the proprietor of the Gazette and a small job had been found. Unusually for Gerald, he had acted without consulting his wife on the matter. Isabel disapproves of Harriet going out to work. Even now, at the mention of the newspaper, she is all angles, fingers curled tight around her sherry glass, lips puckering.

Ralph, who had made up his mind to marry Harriet by then, saw no reason to object to the scheme. She is not the cleverest woman of his acquaintance, rather young and impressionable, but this job will be harmless enough: just a little pastime that will come to a natural end when they marry, something to exorcise those more outrageous ideas. He has no quarrel with Gerald’s handling of the matter. He would even go so far as to claim in public that he is proud to have a modern working woman as his fiancée. And privately, he imagines that the insight into the world of journalism, even at a local rag like the Gazette, will enable her to assist him in his own political ambitions. She might even see to his letters and speeches, and save him the bother of retaining a typist.

‘Mr Pickford is publishing one of my pieces in Monday’s edition,’ she says. ‘You’ll see it then. Rather different from my usual.’

‘Really, darling? How thrilling!’ He beams at her. ‘What’s it about? Won’t you tell us now?’

‘Alright, I shall. There was a shoplifting incident at Hartleys, on Kensington High Street.’

‘Hartleys?’ Isabel is shocked by the information. ‘But Hartleys is a respectable store. Who would steal from Hartleys?’

‘Women,’ Harriet says, before taking a larger mouthful of sherry, relishing it almost as much as she relishes the horror on her mother’s face. She catches Ralph’s eye. ‘Young women. Two of them. They lifted a mink coat, some blouses, scarves, gloves and paste jewellery. That’s why it’s my piece – it’s news, but I’m using it for the women’s section of the paper.’

‘“Lifted” – what a dreadful expression!’ Isabel says. ‘Poor Mr Hartley.’