I gave him that smile of mine, telling him not to worry himself on my account. Dried my hands, no doubt. I’d have had my pinny on, I shouldn’t wonder. Then out the back door and the passage past the woodshed and the coal store and the wash house. Out the back door and up the path. Cold and dark, I can tell you that much, though if you’re wanting more colourful descriptions than that you might have to give me a while. There’ll have been coal fires burning, and I’ve no doubt the family three doors down will have had their Christmas decorations up already, so there might have been a couple of lights down the way past the sheds and the rhubarb patch.

She was standing at the back door with the phone wedged up against her ear – the cable pulled so tight it looked like it could cut your head off if you ran at it too fast. The way she was talking, with her accent all proper, I knew it was Cordelia she must have been talking to. It was always a source of amusement for the ladies at our WI – me and my London pal; her married to a minister; her who turned up for my birthday with a fruit basket the size of a rowing boat and who took me out to Crosby Lodge in a chauffeur-driven bloody Rolls-Royce. And Gwenny was all but bloody curtseying as she stood there, wrapped up in her housecoat, four foot eight in her slippers and with her curlers half in, half out of her hair.

I pushed Gwenny back down the passageway, eager to be out of the cold and worried the phone cord was about to ping out of the back of the phone. She said her goodbyes like she was talking to the Queen Mother, half curtseying as she handed me the phone and scuttled off back towards the parlour. I followed after, winding up the phone cord and didn’t say hello to Cordelia until we were in the warm and Gwenny was able to start fussing with the kettle and cups and shovelling a scuttle of coals onto the fire of the big old Rayburn in the corner.

‘I’ve told you before, it’s not fair to be using Gwenny’s phone and expecting her to be my secretary …’

She laughed at that, genuinely laughing out loud at the very suggestion of me with a secretary. ‘You sound breathless, Flick. Did you run?’