‘Good,’ says Mr Gidley, primly. ‘Satisfactory.’ He reaches behind him and counts out new buttons to be prepared for sale. ‘Here,’ he says, sliding them over the counter along with the coins he owes her. It’s not much but it’s work she can do from home, work that can be fitted in around her medley of other everyday tasks. Although neither Mary nor Jos would admit as much, Mary is the only maid they have since they moved to Folgate Street – up early to clean and blacken the hearth, empty the chamber pots, clean and sweep to stave off the scourge of black beetles. She feels the weight of responsibility – rent, food, even the cleanliness of their rooms – lies heavy upon her shoulders.

‘Make ’em neat girl!’ instructs Mr Gidley as Mary goes to leave, his attention already elsewhere in the shop.

‘Yes, sir,’ Mary says, trying very hard not to poke her tongue out at him as he looks the other way. The coins rattle in her hand as she leaves the shop, the bell ringing loudly before the door slams shut behind her.

Natalya shifts on the edge of the narrow bed as the three children bunch together under the worn old blankets, eyes wide, feet fidgeting, impatient for tonight’s story. It will be a special one too for they know it is their last – tomorrow, their storyteller departs for the bright lights of the capital.

‘Are you sitting comfortably?’ Natalya asks softly and three little faces nod eagerly back at her. The chair in the corner scrapes and she looks up to see the children’s mother join them.

‘Then I shall begin,’ says Natalya. ‘Once upon a time, in a land not so very far away, there lived, by the edge of the big blue sea, an old farmer with his three daughters, No One, Nothing and Nobody.’ She counts them on her fingers one by one and the children do the same.

‘No One, the oldest, was tall, dark and as strong as an ox, Nothing was small, fair and as fleet of foot as a fox, and Nobody, the youngest, well she was somewhere in-between. They toiled every day, from dawn ’til dusk, farming a narrow strip full of hard stones and stubborn pebbles between the deep woods and the big blue sea. But their lives had not always been like this. The farmer had once been a king, ruling wisely and kindly with his beloved wife until, alas, a fever struck her down and she died. Weighed down by sorrow, weeks passed before the king realised his wife’s lucky gold ring, set with the Emerald of Wisdom, had also been lost. Without both his wife and the precious stone, the king’s power floundered like a fish out of water. Ousted by a distant cousin, he fled to a far corner of the land, renaming his daughters so none would know their true identity.