Harold frowned. He thought of all the years he hadn’t spoken to Queenie. “Maybe you were afraid,” he said. “I had a friend once but it took me a long time to see that she was. It was actually rather funny because we first met in a stationery cupboard.” He laughed, remembering the scene, but the woman didn’t. It was probably difficult to imagine.

She stopped the foot that had been swinging like a pendulum, and studied her slipper as if she had not noticed it before. “One day I will leave,” she said. She looked across the drab room and caught Harold’s eye, and then at last she smiled.

♦

Contrary to David’s predictions, Queenie Hennessy had not turned out to be a socialist, feminist or lesbian. She was a stout, plain-looking woman with no waist and a handbag tucked over her forearm. It was well known that Mr Napier considered women to be little more than ticking hormone bombs. He gave them jobs as barmaids and secretaries and expected in return the odd favour in the back of his Jaguar. So Queenie marked a new departure at the brewery, and one that Mr Napier would not have made, had anyone other than her applied for the job.

Her manner was quiet and unassuming. Harold overheard a young chap saying, “You forget she’s a woman really.” Within a matter of days there were reports that she had brought an unprecedented order to the financial department. But this did not seem to stop the impersonations and laughter that now filled the corridors. Harold hoped she didn’t hear. He watched her sometimes in the canteen with her sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper. She had a way of sitting with the young secretaries and listening, as if she, or they, were not there at all.

It was when he picked up his briefcase to go home one evening that he heard a snuffling sound from behind a cupboard door. He tried to walk past, but the noise didn’t stop. He turned back.

Edging the door open, to his relief he had found nothing at first, just boxes of paper. Then the sound had come again, more like a sob, and he had discovered a squat figure, pressed against the wall, with her back to him. Her jacket tugged at the seam that ran the length of her spine.

“I do beg your pardon,” he’d said. He had been on the point of closing the door again and rushing away, when she had started to weep.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s I who should apologize.” Now he was standing half in the cupboard and half outside it, with a woman he didn’t know crying into manila envelopes.

“I’m good at my job,” she said.

“Of course.” He glanced down the corridor, hoping one of the younger chaps would appear and talk to her. He had never been very good with emotion. “Of course,” he said again, as if saying it repeatedly would be enough.