All Netta’s resolutions froze solid on her return to Yorkshire. No one was prepared for the winter of 1947 when snow blanketed Britain for week upon week. It could only be endured. Pavements were piled high with icy mounds and Netta struggled by foot to Salomon’s through tunnels of ice. Everything ground to a halt, pipes froze up and the power failed. Coal supplies were difficult and factories began to seize up, laying off their workforce. Business was slack at Salomon’s and the girls who did make the effort to get themselves to work were often turned away again when there was no power.

Netta had never known such cold. Her bedsit was like a block of ice with no heating when the power failed and ferns of frost crusted the insides of the window pane. The rooflight was thick with ice. She piled on layers of clothing, struggling to keep out the chill, but her gumboots were at the farm and her bootees thin, giving her chilblains on her heels. In desperation she ran out into the Abbey grounds to dance away their itching, barefoot in the snow.

The daily tramp to Salomon’s was agony. The wind whistled from the steppes of Russia, chilled to iciness by the North Sea and the bleak moors, biting into her face until the ends of her nose and lips were raw.

The only comfort in all of this freezing mayhem was the beauty of the scenery, the wonderful snowscapes and drifting sculptures that hung from the Abbey ruins by the river skating rink. Netta loved to watch the children tobogganing down the slopes and hoped that Father would make Gus his own snowman in the farmyard. Even Aireview Street looked like the castle of a snow princess, dripping with icicles, crusted with rose-tinted snow in the sunlight, all its grim shabby reality disguised by the dazzling whiteness. Her fingers were too raw to sew fine work, no one was in the mood for making clothes and Netta was bored, lost without something in her hand. She walked up the slippery street to see if Vida Bloom needed a hand with anything.

When she arrived there, shivering on the doorstep, Vida ushered her in before a warm coal fire, gave her a glass of strange spirits. ‘That’ll warm you up better than any hot water bottle!’

It burned Netta’s throat but fired her brain with Dixie’s challenge. She leaned back and told Vida how Dixie had suggested she set up her own dressmaking business.