You’re meeting Felix, Roz told herself. It doesn’t matter what the likes of Suzie and the other Haggartys think. They don’t know you, nor have they tried to get to know you. If it weren’t for the fact that you had nowhere else to go, you’d never share the time of day with any of them. Keeping this thought in her mind, she hastened to Paddy’s market. She was so focused on the task at hand that she never noticed Suzie stealing silently down the steps behind her.

Her trip to the market had been a success and her string bag was getting heavier with each step. As she made her way to meet Mabel, her thoughts turned to Felix. He knew that the Haggartys had lied because he had said so in his letter. She wondered what he must have thought when he found out the truth, then marvelled at how clever he had been to remember the Liver Building and to think to write to her there. He had just taken it in his stride, which was one of the things she liked about him, his ability to remain cool and level-headed when things went wrong. As she walked, the loose sole of her plimsoll caught on the uneven paving, causing her to trip. Cursing under her breath, she heard her skirt tear as she landed on her knees. Having let go of the bag in order to break her fall, the contents were now rolling freely across the pavement. Getting to her feet, she hastily gathered the items she had managed to scrounge and placed them back into the bag before looking at the damage to her skirt. She sighed heavily. It hadn’t looked good before, being three sizes too big and in desperate need of darning, but now it had an almighty rip from the knee to the hem which hung down by her toes. She rolled the waistband of the skirt over several times, and looked down at her plimsolls. The one which had tripped her up now had a huge hole and you could clearly see her toe poking through. Dusting herself down, Roz continued on her way to the Chinese laundry. There was no sense in getting annoyed, accidents happened, although this one could have been avoided had she been wearing her own shoes instead of Suzie’s cast-offs which were at least one size too big.