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who showed me to my room called you Mr Snow.’
    â€˜And quite rightly; I am in charge of the staff here and head of the domestics, but you, miss, are employed by Lady Manbrook.’
    She said in her sensible way, ‘Oh, I see, thank you for telling me. I’ll try not to give any of you any extra work.’
    â€˜If I may say so, miss, it is a pleasure to have some one young in the house.’
    He made his stately way out of the room, leaving her to enjoy tiny sandwiches, hot buttered toast and fairy cakes as light as air.
    By seven o’clock she had the trunk empty, its contents extending in piles half-way across the attic floor. Tomorrow she would go through each pile and arrange the contents according to the dates, dealing with the newspaper cuttings first, for it seemed to her that they would be the easiest. There were two more trunks; she would have to sort them in the same way and then add the piles together. Weeks of work, if she was to index them too.
    She went downstairs and through the side door to her flat, fed Horace and took him for a brief stroll, then came back to switch on the lights and draw the curtains. A fire had been laid ready to light in the small grate and she put a match to it, put the fireguard in front of it and went to take a bath and dress. She had nothing really suitable for dinner, only a dark brown dress in fine wool, very plain and at least two years old, or a grey pinafore dress with a white silk blouse. She got into the brown, promising herself that with her first pay packet she would buy something suitable for dining in the splendour of Lady Manbrook’s dining-room. She took pains with her face, brushed her tawny head until it shone like copper, and went back to the house to be met by Snow.
    â€˜The ladies expect you to join them in the drawing-room,’ he offered, and led the way.
    Suzannah saw at a glance that her brown dress waswoefully inadequate, but she didn’t allow it to worry her; she sat down to enjoy her sherry and take her sensible part in the conversation. And dinner, although somewhat more lengthy than lunch, was just as pleasant. She excused herself shortly afterwards, wished the two ladies goodnight and went back to her room. The fire was burning nicely and Horace was sitting before it, the picture of a contented cat. Suzannah too uttered a sigh of contentment, made a cup of tea from the selection of beverages she had found in the tiny cupboard in the kitchen corner, and went to bed. The room was warm and the firelight comforting, and she curled up and went to sleep within minutes, with Horace beside her.
    Within a few days she had found her feet. She had little time to herself but that didn’t matter overmuch; no one had suggested the hours she should work, so she arranged her own; from nine o’clock in the morning until lunchtime, and then work again without a pause until the seven o’clock gong. Horace, that most amenable of cats, was quite happy to have a walk in the morning after breakfast, another few minutes after lunch and then a more leisurely stroll in the evening. Snow had offered scraps from the kitchen: tasty morsels of chicken, ends off the joints and fish; and she had arranged to have milk left at her door from the local farm. Life might be busy, but it was pleasant, and she had no idle moments in which to repine. When the opportunity occurred, she would have to ask about having a half-day a week so that she could shop in Marlborough for her bits and pieces.
    She thought that probably she was going about her task in a very unprofessional way but, be that as it may, she had made headway. The piles of letters, cuttings andold photographs were beginning to take shape and make sense.
    Some of them were very old indeed; letters written in spidery hands, crossed and recrossed, invoices and bills, dressmaker’s accounts and any number of receipts and recipes. She began to deal with these, getting them roughly into date