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essences, added the correct quantity of spring water and covered it with one of the thick, clean cloths stacked on the bench. Then she turned her attention to the contents of the pans she had made up two days previously. The liquid in them seethed and churned, and bubbles fizzing to the surface broke into the hush that had fallen over the shed. As Ellen skimmed, Simon Prosser’s blank-looking eyes haunted her, reminding her of dark things she did not understand and tried not to think about.
    ‘Hey,’ said Madge Eager, her friend, ‘did I tell you about Alf’s—’
    Holding a full pan of ginger beer, Ellen turned and caught her foot on the iron bar that anchored the table to the wall. She staggered and overbalanced. With a whoosh the liquid cascaded onto the floor. The pan dropped from her hands and fell heavily on her knee.
    ‘Hey...’ Madge repeated.
    Ellen sat in a mess of sodden cotton and sticky ginger beer. Pain thrummed behind her kneecap and sprouted up and down her leg. ‘Sweet Fanny Adams,’ she said, and bit her lip.
    ‘Here.’ Madge threw down her spoon and helped Ellen to the bench. ‘Clumsy coot.’
    ‘It’s my knee.’ Ellen leant against the wall, dislodging a spray of whitewash over her head, temporarily deprived of speech.
    Madge yanked up the wet overall and placed a hand on Ellen’s already swelling knee. In an effort to gain control, Ellen rocked and clamped her mouth shut. She wanted to cry in great, noisy bursts, as much for the pain as for the dangerous feelings at the back of her mind, for the pity of all who were lost and hurt, and for the things that she was powerless to do or undo.
    Madge wrung out a cloth in cold water and wrapped it round the injured leg. ‘It’s the best I can do, Ellen love,’ she said. ‘It’ll help the swelling.’
    Ellen extracted a handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose. ‘That was bloody cack-handed,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t concentrating.’
    ‘Never mind.’ Madge brushed at Ellen’s headsquare and wiped away the moisture under her friend’s eyes with the flat of her thumb.
    By the end of the afternoon, the pain had receded into an ache, but the knee was difficult to bend. Ellen moved warily and did less work than normal.
    ‘Ladies, please.’
    She was knotting a fresh compress when Mr Barnard junior entered and gave his customary bleat for attention, an anxious-looking man who conveyed the impression that his business was an insupportable burden. Perhaps it was. The brewery was one of the chief employers for the village and its produce, which included the ginger beer, lemonade and a little cherry cider, was well known in the area. Indeed, Mr Barnard was fond of boasting that their fame had reached Winchester, but Ellen never believed him.
    Over the years, he had developed tricks to counterbalance his lack of natural authority, and he climbed on a chair to address the workers. His starched collar required attention and he seemed washed-out by the June warmth. One hand, with bitten fingernails, pulled at the pinchbeck watchchain draped across his waistcoat to check the time – a gesture designed to avoid having to look at the audience.
    ‘Listen, please, ladies,’ he addressed the upturned faces, ‘listen’, and the power he held over them gave him the spur he needed. ‘Things are not going so well at the moment, and it is necessary to lay off some... a few... of you.’
    There was a profound silence in the shed, and several minds looped the loop for reasons why it should not be them. Barnard had been clever, of course: survival came before unity.
    ‘In the circumstances, it can’t be helped.’ Disconcerted by the hush that had fallen, stony and hostile, over the floor, Barnard trailed to a finish, ashamed of his poor performance.
    ‘That’s what the bloke said when he couldn’t bleedin’ get it up,’ Madge muttered to Ellen.
    Ellen did not manage a smile.
    ‘It’s the times,’ Barnard said. ‘Things aren’t going