‘You mustn’t be alone,’ Miss Scott went on. ‘If something went wrong, it could prove fatal without medical help.’ She pulled a key from the drawer. ‘There. I knew I had it somewhere.’ She smiled and this time there was a warmth there, sympathy. ‘Where are you having it done?’

‘Herne Hill.’ Betty swallowed.

‘That’s convenient. As it happens, I live in Streatham High Street, in one of those mansion flats above the shops, opposite the ice rink.’ She pulled a compliment slip from a stash on her desk, wrote on it and pushed it over to Betty, along with the key. ‘This is my address, this is my key. You can stay with me.’

Relief flooded through Betty, a rush of safety and warmth.

‘Get a cab.’

‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ Betty said. ‘I truly don’t. You’ve been so kind, so considerate. How did you know?’

‘I have a nose for these things,’ she said.

‘Do you help everyone like this?’

Miss Scott waved her hand. ‘There’s something about you, Miss Fisher,’ she said. ‘I can see you’re no flibbertigibbet. I don’t suppose you’ll stay in the typing pool for long. You’ll go far. Now, get back to your work.’

Betty stood up, extending her hand. ‘I can’t thank you enough, Miss Scott.’

‘Not a word to the others. Or,’ Miss Scott added, ‘to anyone.’

Betty could hear the clacking of the typewriters on the floor below. She didn’t have many strokes of luck, she thought, but this was one for sure.

§

The typing pool looked out over Lincoln’s Inn Fields. She used to see him waiting there, would rush to meet him, holding his arm with two hands and leaning close as they sauntered in the gardens, or up to King’s Cross before she caught her train back to Hatfield. Now as she glanced out of the window she felt the bite of panic. It was three weeks since she’d last seen him, two weeks since the abortion. She’d been pushing the whole encounter with him – there was no other word for it – to the back of her mind, shuffling it into place with other unpleasant encounters. Encounter, she thought, was a good word. Something difficult, and unexpected. Like the pregnancy, the abortion.

She hadn’t thought it would hurt so much, or bleed so heavily. She’d felt as if she were on the rack, her bones torn from their tendons, tendons from muscles, hour after hour. Miss Scott came back after work, took her temperature. Betty screwed her eyes tight, screamed as the catheter tube the woman had inserted slipped out and with it the little slug covered in blood, which she flushed down the lavatory. She hadn’t thought it would leave such a hole of longing, of what might have been.