“Don’t worry about her,” the other daytime barmaid, Jasmine, would tell Lulu, reassuringly. “She’s just a miserable old cow.” Jasmine was plump and radiant, with coffee-colored skin and a broad moonbeam of a smile. Jasmine’s mum had been a school dinner lady and her gran a bus conductress; Jasmine liked pub work, she said, for the same reason her mum had liked the school and her gran had liked the buses, because it got them out into the world and around people. Jasmine liked people, and Lulu liked Jasmine, who was sunny and friendly, and hummed softly to herself as she worked. Unfortunately, it was not Jasmine who was in charge.

One of the few benefits of working at the Crown & Sceptre was that it was close enough to her parents’ home for Lulu to visit the attic in her off hours. She was slowly eking out the unfolding of her great-great-grandmother’s love story, allowing herself to open one envelope a week to savor the tale and picture the players: Grandma Jo hiding behind her hair as Lulu did when she felt insecure, wearing a sturdy skirt suit of brown or gray, with a tailored jacket over a plain white blouse; pretty little Lucy, all ruffles and ribbons in sickly sugary pink; and in between the two, handsome and dashing Herr B., who was as charming to poor girls as he was to rich, and in the end would choose Jo over Lucy to be his wife. Tracing back from the hundredth birthday party, Lulu had found photographs that she was almost sure were of Grandma Jo, going back to the turn of the last century. She had an intelligent face, as Lulu’s father had remarked, but no one could ever have called her a beauty. Luckily, she had had other qualities that had attracted the love of the yellow-haired and glamorous Herr B., of whom, for some reason, Lulu could not find a single likely image. Maybe he had not liked to have his photograph taken.

Sitting now in the dusty comfort of the cool attic, Lulu looked at her watch and sighed, wishing she could spend longer there, looking through photographs, half dreaming, half imagining the long-ago love affair between the ugly duckling governess and the handsome young student. The last envelope from New York bore a January postmark, and Lulu had been saving for a special treat the occasion when she would open it and read the story of how love must finally have bloomed at the New Year’s Eve party. She looked at it wistfully now, feeling she could happily use a treat at that moment, but Jason, the evening bartender, had developed stomach flu and Michelle had informed Lulu that afternoon that she had volunteered to take his shift on top of her own. “Unless,” she had added sarcastically, “you’ve been invited to dinner at Buckingham Palace instead.”

“Don’t let her bully you,” Jasmine had advised. “Tell her you have been invited to Buckingham Palace, that’ll shut her up.”