‘It must be quite a shock, moving to a sleepy little place like Wormley.’ He addressed another boy across the table. ‘Hey, Bingley, isn’t that where your friend lives?’

‘Where?’

‘Wormley.’

‘Yes, Kit Waddington. Why?’

They had my full attention now.

‘Molly lives there too. Her dad’s the vicar.’

‘Have you met Kit yet?’

‘Only briefly, at Christmas. They live in the big house. Aren’t they rather grand?’

‘His pa does something fancy in the City and is rich as Croesus, but it’s his ma who inherited the place, apparently. Kit’s quite a character. Knew him at prep school. Brilliant at sport and public speaking, not massively well-endowed in the brains department. Bit bonkers – never could rely on him. Didn’t pass the eleven-plus into the grammar, so they sent him off to a posh boarding school.’

Dinah nudged me with her elbow and whispered, ‘Made a hit there, Molly.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’

She tilted her head towards Frank, sitting two away, and raised her eyebrow. ‘With Frank. Can’t you tell?’

‘Tell what?’

‘Oh, you are such an innocent. He fancies you like crazy, you dolt.’

The truth was, I had not the slightest interest in Frank. My head was filled with thoughts of Kit. So it seemed as though fate was on my side when, at breakfast the following day, Pa was flicking through the pile of brown envelopes – bills – with a series of quiet sighs, until he pulled out a different-shaped letter in heavy cream bond.

‘Whatever can this be?’ He slit open the top with a knife and pulled out a single sheet of paper, putting on his half-glasses to read. ‘Heavens. It’s from the Waddingtons. They’ve invited us for tea.’

‘Us – you mean all of us?’ I immediately felt nervous and excited, all at once. ‘Jimmy too? Will it be just our family, do you think, or other people too?’

‘I have no idea, my darling. We’ll just have to wait and see.’

Most of that morning was spent trying on and discarding various items of clothing and despairing of finding anything suitable that was smart enough, yet not too formal, or too warm or too chilly for the changeable spring weather. Finally I hit on a compromise: a skirt on which Mrs D had already worked her charms, reshaping it into a more modern pencil design and lowering the hem, paired with a blouse that had once been Mum’s and wasn’t too tight across the chest. Then I spent ages in front of the mirror examining my face, and made a disastrous attempt at shaping my eyebrows with Mother’s old tweezers. They ended up looking even more wonky than before.

Mrs D caught me trying to straighten my hair with the clothes iron.

‘Heavens, girl, whatever are you doing?’