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taken off and folded neatly at night, your bed to be made properly each morning before breakfast. Now let me see your clothes.’
    Ellie had no idea what Miss Gilbert was searching for. She watched as the woman set aside her hair ribbons, a pink striped dress, the blue velvet dress and a Fair Isle cardigan in one pile.
    ‘Your mother?’ Miss Gilbert sniffed, finding a photograph of Polly.
    ‘Yes.’ Ellie snatched it up and held it tightly, afraid the woman was going to take it away.
    ‘Keep it up here,’ the woman snapped, examining her underwear and nighties as if searching for something unpleasant. ‘You may keep those clothes to wear,’ she said, pointing to the grey pinafore dress, cardigan and white blouses. ‘The other things are quite unsuitable for wear here. I’ll put them away until you go home.’
    ‘But Auntie Marleen bought me the velvet frock,’ Ellie cried out in alarm, putting out a restraining hand on the woman’s. ‘She said it was for Sundays and parties.’
    ‘Parties?’ Miss Gilbert peered at Ellie over her glasses, pale eyes registering extreme shock, her mouth opening just enough to reveal yellow teeth. ‘We don’t have parties here.’
    It soon became clear to Ellie that laughter, friendly chatter and even kindness were all as unknown to Miss Gilbert as parties. First Miss Gilbert came back into the room and caught her sitting on the bed and smacked her leg hard. Later, when Ellie was asked to present her hands for inspection, dirt under a couple of nails brought on a lecture on the evils of spreading disease. When ordered to lay the kitchen table for supper, Miss Gilbert rapped her knuckles with a knife for placing a knife and fork round the wrong way.
    Ellie counteracted this hostility by making careful note of everything, intending to put it all in a letter to her mother later that night. She watched Miss Gilbert cut a few slices of bread, then measure the loaf with a piece of string before putting it away, and she also saw her add some water to the milk in a jug.
    The kitchen was very warm because of the old-fashioned black-leaded range. Yet despite being a large and scrupulously clean place it was devoid of homely touches, or even splashes of colour. The curtains were plain, unbleached cotton, the plates on the dresser pure white. The wooden hoist up on the ceiling had its airing clothes folded neatly. When Miss Gilbert opened the door of the larder, that too had the same ordered appearance, of jars of jam and marmalade in straight lines; even carrots and onions were arranged carefully on a tray. All this was perhaps very laudable, yet the way Miss Gilbert whipped around the kitchen, wiping and straightening as she prepared the meal, made Ellie feel distinctly uncomfortable.
    It was a house of many closed doors. The moment Ellie walked into the kitchen, that door too was closed behind her and she was told to sit at the table. Although it was warm and sunny outside, the kitchen was gloomy, the windows and the door leading out into the yard shut, heightening the feeling of oppression. Ellie had never before had any difficulty in striking up a conversation with anyone, but her attempts to talk to Miss Gilbert were crushed by withering glances and sniffs of disapproval.
    Mr Gilbert came in just as Miss Gilbert was putting a dish of boiled potatoes on the table. He paused in the porch outside the kitchen door to remove his boots, frowning at Ellie, then beckoned to his sister to come closer. ‘I thought I said a boy!’ Ellie heard him say in a low voice, and her heart sank even further.
    Ellie’s mental picture of an undertaker was of a tall, thin man in black with a chalk-white face and a stuckon black moustache. Mr Gilbert was tall, but there the similarity ended.
    Amos Gilbert had more in common with a docker than with the undertakers parodied at the theatre and music halls. He was heavily built, with muscular tanned forearms and a ruddy, fleshy face. Fragments of wood shavings