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Heathlands, Sir Avis’s country estate lying to the west of London. The house in Belgravia was already locked up for the Christmas period.
    Sidestepping a glossy black cat with orange eyes, Agnes followed her mother through the scullery and out into the back yard.
    Three separate washing lines each carrying a line of limp laundry and leaving barely enough room to move, criss-crossed each other,
    Ellen Proctor, Agnes’s grandmother, was turning the wheel of a cast-iron mangle with one hand and feeding through a grizzled-looking shirt with the other. The fact that she had few remaining teeth showed when she smiled.
    ‘All right, my babs? A few bits more and we can have a cup of tea. Got to finish it though. That old skinflint Mrs Bennett is only paying me half a crown, but that’s better than nothing. My cupboard’s as bare as that Mrs Hubbard’s is. How’s you, Agnes?’
    Agnes was rubbing each arm in turn.
    ‘Fine, Gran. What are you going to buy with that half a crown?’ she asked with a smile.
    The fat red arm that turned the wheel of the mangle never faltered. Bright blue eyes, half-hidden by plump cheeks and drooping eyelids, twinkled.
    ‘Pork cuttings, onions, potatoes, bread, butter and cheese. What the ’ell doss thee think I was going to buy? Fur coat? Frills and frippery fer wearing to the ball?’
    Her accent was Bristolian, her tone teasing but oddly serious. When work had dried up at the Bristol docks some years before, this is where Agnes’s grandfather had come to find more work. The River Thames had less of a tidal surge than the River Avon flowing through Bristol, thus ships could come and go more easily. Also, as a capital city, it attracted more trade and Henry Proctor had been tempted by a more plentiful supply of work.
    No amount of teasing from her grandmother could dampen Agnes’s spirit. She was ready in an instant with a cheeky response.
    ‘I thought you might be splashing out on a new cap? Or a new pipe?’
    ‘Cheeky thing! Me cap’s nice and greasy. Keeps off the rain. And as long as there’s baccy in me pipe, it suits for me.’
    She said all this without looking up, without slowing the process of feeding the laundry through the rollers. The mangle squeaked with each turn and the water poured down, splashing her feet and trickling down the drain.
    As she spoke, she clenched the clay pipe in the last of her teeth, sucking it in with each downward turn of the mangle and blowing out on the upward stroke. No more than three teeth, two at the top and one at the bottom, gripped her pipe.
    Her mother read her mind and nudged her arm in warning.
    ‘I’ve brought you a few things, Ma,’ said Agnes’s mother. ‘Leftovers, but all good. Half a leg of cold lamb, a knuckle of cooked ham, a chocolate cake and a veal and ham pie. That should keep you going for a while.’
    ‘Lovely,’ exclaimed Ellen Proctor. ‘If you put the kettle on, we can have a piece of that cake with our tea. This pair of coms is the last,’ she declared as the legs of a pair of men’s combinations came through the rollers and dropped into the laundry basket.
    Agnes watched with interest as her grandmother wiped her meaty hands in her apron. She didn’t know how old her grandmother was, but guessed at sixty. Her hair was white as Old Man’s Beard growing on the hedgerows around Heathlands; her face was wrinkled and plump, and her body as round as a cottage loaf.
    ‘Me back aches fit to break in ’alf,’ Ellen Proctor grumbled while massaging the small of her back with both hands. ‘I’m gettin’ too old fer this lark.’
    ‘How old are you, Gran?’ Agnes asked, seized with a sudden urge to know exactly.
    Her grandmother winked, her wrinkled face only inches away from that of her granddaughter. Agnes and her mother helped hang out the washing before going into the kitchen.
    ‘Too old. Know this, me girl, that it’s better to be young though youth is wasted on the young. And I used to be young. I