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sharp.
    ‘Frost tonight,’ shouted the old gardener as they made their way past the shed where he kept his tools.
    ‘Good for the parsnips,’ shouted Agnes. ‘He always says that, so I’ve said it for him,’ she giggled.
    Lydia giggled with her.
    ‘You’ve quite a way with you, Agnes Stacey.’
    The two girls hurried back to the kitchen, Lydia hampered by her hobble skirt, Agnes striding as though she had no skirt on at all, though she did; a navy blue one that billowed like a tent around her. The maid who answered the door was wearing something similar, Lydia noticed.
    Back in the garage, Thompson straightened and rolled his shoulders before standing back and eyeing the car’s bodywork.
    ‘Bloody lovely,’ he exclaimed, his smile threatening to split his face in half.
    He was in the process of lighting another cigarette, when the door in the far corner of the garage opened and attracted his attention. He smiled as Megan Rogers brushed the damp from her shoulders and shook her umbrella.
    He grinned at her and held his arms open. ‘Give us a kiss.’
    Megan tossed her head. ‘You might not deserve one.’ She was always ready to tease him.
    ‘Why might that be?’ he asked. He ran his fingers through his wiry light brown hair, his legs apart, waiting for her to come to him.
    ‘You’ve been entertaining other women. I know you have. I heard them.’
    Her tone condemned but her lips were smiling.
    ‘Lady Agnes has found herself a friend.’
    ‘Shhh!’ Megan hissed, her finger held in front of her lips. ‘You know you shouldn’t say that. What if somebody hears?’
    He shrugged. ‘What if they do? We all know that she’s the old man’s kid.’
    ‘She’s the cook’s daughter. She don’t know the way things is herself. So you watch it, Ted Thompson. You just watch what you say.’

Chapter Three
    It was Sarah Stacey’s habit to visit her mother on the other side of London two weeks before Christmas. After that there was too much to do at Heathlands what with all the guests Sir Avis invited. Even with a household of experienced domestic servants, plus Agnes, she would be too busy.
    Agnes was the biggest problem, the sulkiest kitchen maid ever to don an apron.
    ‘I don’t want to go into service. I want to fly, or drive, or make useful things. I don’t want to wait on people.’
    ‘So, if you wish to make things, how about being a milliner?’
    Agnes’s sulky expression turned even sulkier. ‘I don’t mean hats. I mean useful inventions.’
    Sarah rolled her eyes, sighed and hustled her daughter out of the door and into the car. Thompson was driving them to Myrtle Street. Once the visit was over, a few days later, they would get a cab and a train to Heathlands, Thompson picking them up the other end.
    Sarah’s mother Ellen Proctor lived in a red brick terraced house in Myrtle Street, not far from the docks in the East End of London. Originally built for rope makers, coopers and carpenters in the days when sailing ships had been made of wood, the houses were flat fronted and basic. They had a door at the front, one sash window on the ground floor and one above it. There were two bedrooms, a living room and scullery plus an outside privy at the end of the garden. Most of the people who lived there had poorly paid jobs, or in some instances, none at all.
    The terraced street was one of many arranged in lines along cobbled streets where kids played, women gossiped and the sound of cranes swinging from ship to shore screeched and clanged for most of the day.
    Agnes’s mood was still on her when they were offloaded in a deserted street some way from the house in Myrtle Street. Sarah did not like being dropped off at the door in case the neighbours would accuse her of being snooty.
    ‘You should consider yourself lucky, my girl,’ snapped Sarah Stacey to her daughter. ‘At least you have a position.’
    ‘I don’t want to be a kitchen maid or a house maid. I want to drive a car,’ Agnes