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repeated.
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous! You’re a girl. Girls do not drive cars.’
    Sarah Stacey looked and sounded exasperated. She had always hoped that her daughter would stay in the house where she worked, a domestic servant on better pay and enjoying better conditions than most. It had never occurred to her that Agnes might not want that and it had certainly never occurred to her that Agnes wanted to drive a motor car.
    ‘Damn Ted Thompson! He had no business teaching you how to drive. No business at all!’
    Sarah had never liked Ted Thompson, a man who considered himself attractive to women with his smart uniform and leather gloves that squeaked when he pulled them on.
    She knew he was having a fling with Megan and had cautioned the girl.
    ‘He’s not the settling type,’ Sarah had said to her.
    In return, Megan had smiled knowingly and said, ‘Neither is Sir Avis.’
    The barb had hit home and a bright flush had flown over Sarah’s handsome face. Deep down she knew it was Sir Avis she had to blame. He’d encouraged Agnes to aim above her status. It wouldn’t do. It just wouldn’t do.
    ‘Sir Avis thought it was a brilliant idea,’ said Agnes, instantly confirming the truth that her mother found hard to face.
    Sarah was speechless. Sir Avis had very modern ideas that she herself found difficult to come to terms with. She’d laughed the day he’d declared that at some point in the future men would take to the skies in flying machines.
    ‘Nonsense,’ she’d said to him. That was some years ago before Agnes had been born. Since then she’d had to eat her words, but still she found it difficult to believe that the lot of the domestic servant and the working class in general would ever change.
    The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate.
God ordained one’s lot in life according to the words of the hymn. Not that she needed a hymn to tell her that. Some things would change but not everything.
    ‘Remember to say don’t instead of do not, and drop a few aitches. Otherwise your Gran might think that we’re both getting ideas above our station and the neighbours will make fun.’
    ‘So why teach me how to speak properly in the first place?’
    ‘For the benefit of your betters. Rich folk like to have servants who speak properly.’
    ‘I’ve already told you. I don’t want to be in service. If I did I would be a chauffeur.’
    ‘Well, you can’t. And that’s an end to it.’ Sarah sighed. ‘Well, in the meantime you’ll have to accept your lot in life until something else turns up. If you meet a nice young man and get married, you won’t be working for long anyway.’
    Agnes smiled to herself and whispered a long drawn out ‘Yesss … That might be different.’
    ‘Don’t even think about Robert Ravening,’ hissed her mother. ‘Mark my words; marrying him is something that will never happen.’
    Agnes pouted. ‘That isn’t necessarily so …’
    ‘No!’ snapped her mother, a warning finger raised in front of Agnes’s face.
    ‘If that’s the case, where does my father fit in?’ she’d asked but her mother had just walked on.
    Agnes was determined to hold on to her dream. Some day she would get to do what she wanted to do. Like the doctor’s daughter, she too wanted to do something useful, not cleaning and cooking for rich folk no matter how good to her they were.
    Agnes followed her mother past Jarmans, the shop on the corner of the street where they sold everything from enamel jugs to fresh bread, Colman’s mustard to Cherry Blossom shoe polish.
    Sacks of cabbages, potatoes, carrots and onions took up half the narrow pavement in front of the shop window. An enamel sign advertising Sunlight soap filled the gap between shop window and the living space above the shop. Brushes and mops hung from the wall in the narrow shop doorway making it necessary for customers of wide girth to turn sideways to enter. Inside the shop smelled of lavender polish and strong tea.
    A bell jangled