Her initial time at Mill House had been spent washing and scrubbing and polishing. It had transpired that Arthur’s late mother had been an invalid for a number of years before her death, and the whole house had been filthy, covered in grime and dust and mouse droppings. Once she had put the huge stone-floored kitchen to rights, a major task in itself, she had started on the living room and then the dining room, although Arthur had told her this was never used. Nevertheless, she couldn’t bear to leave it in the state it had been in. Two of the four bedrooms, the two she and Betsy now slept in, hadn’t been occupied for decades and there had been mould on the furniture as well as the walls and ceiling, but Arthur’s late mother’s room, along with Arthur’s too, had not been much better. For twelve weeks solid she had worked from dawn to dusk getting things straight, but once she’d finished the house and its contents were transformed.

She had washed every scrap of bedding and linen, every curtain, and beaten the numerous clippy mats covering the floors to within an inch of their lives. She’d scrubbed and waxed and polished the furniture, and although Arthur hadn’t commented she was pleased with the results. Under all the filth and mould of years most of the contents of the house were of good quality, and the kitchen – her favourite room – with its beamed ceiling, enormous open fire with bread ovens either side, long wooden table and chairs, oak dresser and two cushioned settles standing against whitewashed walls, was a pleasure to work in.

The privy and wash house were outside in the flag-stoned yard, and when she’d first opened the door to the former she had gagged. It had taken a whole day to bring it up to scratch but now she kept it clean and fresh with daily ashes down the hole in the plank seat, and insisted the miller take the contents to the dung hill in a nearby field once a week, where a local farmer spread it on his crops. She always threw two or three handfuls of lime down the hole after it had been cleared, but tried not to use the privy for an hour or so to give the smell a chance to clear.