The manager muttered disapprovingly about the bright red lipstick she wore at all times, but Nancy didn’t care. She was so cheerful and efficient at her job that the customers loved her, and she always received the best tips of everyone on the shift. Some of the other girls talked behind her back, even suggesting she was ‘fast’, but Kath assumed they were just jealous. She heard how Nancy spoke to the diners, perfectly polite and deferential but with a teasing tone that made their eyes sparkle, even the women. She saw how the men slipped sly looks as she walked away. Kath wanted to be more like Nancy: bright, confident, funny and eye-catching.

As the days lengthened day-trippers and holidaymakers began to arrive in greater numbers and there were more shifts. Over the Easter weekend the cafe was busier than she’d ever seen it. They were so rushed off their feet she scarcely noticed when a large group of around ten men arrived. The manager bustled about, pulling three tables together by the window.

‘Give us a hand, love, would you?’ Nancy asked as she stacked a large tray with scones, pots of jam and cream, cakes and buttered teacakes. ‘It’s just the tea to come, and the hot water, if you wouldn’t mind.’ Kath busied herself at the urn filling the gleaming silver teapots and water jugs, and it was only as she approached the table with three heavy pots threatening to burn her fingers that she recognised them. They were the men from the Manor.

‘Hello, darlin’.’ The man with the weasely face smirked suggestively. ‘Seen you before, haven’t we? At that crazy pram race last summer?’

‘Shush, Frank,’ said an older man with round glasses. ‘You’re not here to chat up the waitresses.’ Kath put down the pots and enquired whether they would like her to pour. ‘Thank you, miss, but I think we’ll manage.’

‘I’ll just bring the hot water then.’ As she turned, she caught the dark-haired man watching her, with a shy smile. She smiled back in silent acknowledgement, sensing that he probably didn’t like Frank much either.

While serving her own tables nearby she lingered, trying to listen to their conversations, but learned nothing save that the Manor was beastly cold and the food terrible. What a curiously mismatched group they were: a real range of ages, some formally dressed and others in more relaxed garb, none the slightest bit stylish. They were a work team, she thought, rather than friends; people who seemed perfectly familiar with each other and clearly sharing a common purpose, but without much mutual affection.

‘I can’t see why you seem to find them so fascinating,’ Pa said, when she recounted the story later.

‘Unless you’ve got your eye on one of them, you little hussy?’ Mark sniggered.

‘Not at all,’ she bristled. ‘They’re a plain-looking lot if you must know, and too old for me. I’m just so curious about what they’re up to over there. Do you ever hear anything down at the station, Mark?’