‘What are you grinning at? It’s not funny. I don’t get a straight answer out of him these days. He’s taken up his clarinet again. Not for Mozart but that dreadful wailing stuff they play on the Light Programme.’

‘The Blues. It’s Jazz, Mrs Bloom. He’s taken to Jazz that’s all.’ Netta sighed with relief that this change of subject had shifted them away from the real cause of Arnie’s distracted air.

‘It all sounds like two cats in a dyke to me.’ Netta smiled, thinking those were the very words Peg had used about Vida’s Third Programme. There was no accounting for musical taste.

*

The proprietress of Maison Dorelle surveyed Netta with disdain, sniffing over her homespun suit like a bloodhound, searching in vain for a loose thread, uneven hem, any visible flaws in her sewing skills. ‘I wouldn’t be interviewing a factory gel if I wasn’t desperate. Why I should be taking you on, I don’t know. This reference from a Mrs Bloom, a back street dressmaker, no doubt, is hardly worth the paper it’s written on, Mrs Hunter. I don’t take marrieds but as you’re a widow I suppose I can make an exception.

‘My ladies like familiar faces when they disrobe, clean fingernails and sweet breath. Do you smoke?’ Netta shook her head. ‘I want no stale smells on our garments. This is all highly irregular but that harpy just upped and left us without a moment’s notice and with the summer season to prepare for… You’ll have to do, I suppose. You’re the least offensive of the bunch and your accent is at least tolerable. My ladies can manage a bit of Scotch as long as it’s not broad and common.

‘Pity about your hair. Not a fashionable colour at all, too brash to the eye. We’ll have to cover it up. You’ll be on a month’s trial. If you fit into our ways, then we’ll see. This is a very respectable establishment founded by our father, Mr Percival, God rest his soul, departed these two years. Everyone here knows their place and I won’t have slackers. Do you understand me?’

Netta almost bobbed like a servant girl. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And it’s Miss… Miss Venables to you. I shall expect you at eight sharp, tomorrow morning. We shall take it from there. You will answer to Jeanette when called upon to render assistance to our vendeuse, Maybelle.’