‘Ah, that is good luck, for the Mussel Inn is where I am staying,’ Spencer replied, ‘but never mind, I have only come for my parcel.’ He gave a pause then and looked at us all expectantly, which obliged Ma to be hospitable by offering him a mug of tea. He nodded heartily and sat in Da’s chair, looking comfy as you like. Joan had been set to washing the pots, but she cut that task short to pour Spencer’s tea, so we all sat round the fire as he sipped. Joan played with her hair, which hung in two messy plaits, and I guessed she wished she’d had the time to brush it through. Mine gleamed. My hands were soft. My gown was pristine.

The pots will be half cleaned and I’ll have to do them later, I thought. And after watching Joan preen for a bit, Spencer looked towards me.

‘Are you girls not with husbands yet?’ he asked. He asked it gently but it was as direct a question as we had ever been asked in our lives.

We both blushed bright pink. Ma stiffened.

‘I still need my girls around the house for a bit, helping me with the bait-collecting and the chores,’ she said. In truth, she only needed one of us – that is, me, as Joan was lazy and far too mollycoddled. She sniffed and looked uncomfortable. But Spencer was breezy.

‘You should see what girls like you pair can earn in London,’ he went on. I was all ears now. ‘Working in big shops and selling buttons and hats and bodices to the ladies. Or making tassels, or painting fans in the nice little workshops they have set up there. Why, the earnings for girls like you are ten pounds a year, so I’m told.’ He sipped his tea. Politely, with not a hint of a slurp or a sigh.

Ma stiffened again and reddened too, for I don’t think we had ever heard the word ‘bodices’ uttered by a man, and certainly not by a stranger.

But I spoke up. I could not help myself. ‘And how do they get such jobs?’

‘Apprenticeships,’ Spencer replied confidently. ‘Same as fishing. Same as that mill up the road. Fishergirls like you would get a job anywhere, with your handiwork skills. But you’ve got to know the right people, of course.’

‘I should never like to work as an apprentice,’ said Joan. ‘It would be hard work from dawn ’til dusk.’

‘You should never like to work as anything,’ I retorted.

‘But I would like to have a nice trunk of fans and buttons. And bodices,’ Joan added slyly, not meeting Ma’s eye.

‘That’s enough talk of undergarments,’ Ma said.

I could have died on the spot. But Spencer was a man who had heard far dirtier talk than a girl yearning for a cotton bodice, and thankfully the comment bounced off him.