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won’t disturb them.’ He wore a well-cut tweed suit with narrow trousers and carried his cap in his hand. Katy was in her working dress of black skirt and high-necked white blouse with puff sleeves. He thought she was much prettier than the girls of the previous evening. ‘Tell you what: you can show me around.’
    ‘ Well . . ; Katy hesitated, caught off-balance by the request, uncertain what she should do. She glanced at the work on her desk.
    Charles put in quickly, ‘I’ll make it right with Annie.’ Katy admitted, ‘Miss Scanlon hasn’t come in today. I think she’s poorly with a cold.’
    Charles grinned at her, a conspirator: ‘Who’s to know, then? Come on. Please?’
    Katy told herself she could not refuse her employer’s son. She conducted him around the warehouse and
    Charles tried to take some notice of what he was shown, but most of his attention was on her. At the end he asked her, ‘Where do you go for lunch?’ He had not asked his father about the eating habits of his employees.
    Katy blinked at the question. Go somewhere for lunch? She explained, ‘I bring a sandwich and eat it here.’
    Charles realised he had almost made a mistake. If he asked this young girl to lunch with him in a restaurant she would take fright. He said, ‘What about a stroll afterwards? I’ll meet you outside at half past twelve.’ And then he was able to turn to Tomlinson as the manager returned to the office, saying, ‘Miss Merrick has just been showing me around. I asked her as you were closeted with Father.’ Then he went in to see Vincent Ashleigh, so Katy wasn’t given the chance to refuse him as she knew she should — though she did not want to.
    For the rest of the morning she worked with her thoughts elsewhere. She was nervous and a little bit frightened, very much out of her depth. She was young and while boys had made advances they had been of her own class and background. Charles Ashleigh came from a different world. His kind employed and ordered the workers and servants — and she was one of them. But she was excited, too. She could not get him out of her mind.
    Charles, walking the busy streets, crowded with horse-drawn carriages and carts, hooting cars winding between them, was uncertain now. Since seeing her again that morning he was aware that this affair might not be as simple as just talking and flirting. He was sure it was not when he saw her again at twelve-forty. She ran out of the tall building with its legend of ‘Ashleigh’s’ above the gates and on a brass plate in the wall. Her face was flushed and she apologised, ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m late because Mr Tomlinson asked me for some figures.’
    All Charles could find to say, suddenly tongue-tied, was the truth: ‘All right. I’m just glad to see you.’
    That was how it started, with a fifteen-minute stroll and shy conversation.
    They agreed that it would be better not to meet at Ashleigh’s again. Both were uneasily aware that there could be trouble, and while they never discussed it, both preferred to put off the day of reckoning. They progressed to walking longer and in the evenings as the days lengthened, though in the beginning they still observed the niceties and strolled a foot apart. They ventured to Whitley Bay and wandered arm in arm by the seashore and by then it was ‘Charles’ and ‘Katy’. And sometimes he hired a cab pulled by a lackadaisical old horse that clip-clopped along slowly and they rode out in that, holding hands, and kissing when the darkness hid them. Their joy in each other was only increased by the clandestine nature of their love. Occasionally he remembered that he was on leave and at some point would be recalled, and he mentioned this in casual conversation. But that was somewhere in the future and it did not trouble them.
    Inevitably, the affair did not remain secret for long. Annie Scanlon did not probe, but watching the girl, seeing her excitement and happiness, Annie guessed in the