Peggy closed the file and sat back with a sigh of deep regret. Marge had begged her for this job and Peggy rather foolishly had let her heart rule her head and taken her on even though she’d had no previous experience of sewing. The poor woman had tried hard to learn but she was still making too many mistakes, and with all the unpicking and resewing, the garments ended up looking rather grubby.

Looking through the large window to the factory floor, Peggy spotted Marge struggling to clear her machine of the tangled cotton caught under the needle. Fanny Rawson stayed her hand and took over with her usual neat efficiency, and the blockage was cleared again.

Peggy was warmed by Fanny’s seemingly endless patience as she once again showed Marge the correct way to thread the machine. Peggy had asked Solly for the girl to come with her to help oversee the new intake of sewers, and she’d proved to be very reliable.

However, this state of affairs couldn’t be allowed to continue, and it was down to Peggy to do something about it. This was the part of the job she hated the most, especially when it involved someone who was desperate for work – and, it had to be said, a keen trier.

She examined the maternity dresses again in the hope they could be rescued from the seconds pile by a bit of judicious resewing. But the hem dipped at the sides, one of the seams gaped, and the armholes were rucked up where the material had been turned inexpertly and missed the needle altogether. It simply wouldn’t do.

Peggy pushed the dresses to one side and mulled over what she could arrange so the woman wasn’t left entirely without work. She let her gaze trawl the factory which was about a third of the size of the one in Camden Road, but still employed over sixty people.

The cutting tables were definitely not for Marge, and there were enough checkers at the moment, so that was out too. Work in the warehouse meant shifting heavy bales of material and loading and unloading the delivery lorries; the three finishers were nimble-fingered and experts at hand-sewing the final touches to the garments, and the canteen which served the whole estate was already fully staffed.

‘But there might be something in the packing department,’ she muttered, and reached for the list of employees. There were three girls and two men involved in packing the clothes for transport, and she remembered suddenly that one of the girls was pregnant. She placed the list on her desk, checked the time and hurried down the lines of machinists to the partitioned area that housed the packing department.