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winning . . . er, runner. To feel a spark.’ Her new, cultured voice seemed to do the trick. The man looked intrigued.
    ‘Did you? Feel a spark, I mean?’
    ‘Sort of.’ She was feeling one now and it wasn’t just this man’s looks doing it: it was his smell, reminiscent of empty spice jars. ‘I get it in my belly. I mean, stomach. I mean, in my middle.’ She patted the place. ‘I fancy Mid-day Sun.’
    He glanced at her waist and, for the first time, smiled. She’d tucked her gloves into her belt, not wanting a barrier between her hand and her borrowed bag. Thieves were rife at race meetings. The gloves had curled over, like begging paws.
    ‘Interesting. To say he’s unfancied would be an understatement.’
    ‘Stupid choice, probably,’ she agreed.
    ‘Not wholly. He won at Lingfield, at the Derby Trial Stakes, so he’s proved himself over a mile and a half in good company.’
    ‘Blimey, has he?’ Lingfield wasn’t Newmarket or Ascot. It wasn’t even York . . . Actually, Cora couldn’t have found Lingfield on a map if her life depended on it, but that didn’t matter. Mid-day Sun had form, so her funny feeling wasn’t so funny. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be a bomber.’
    ‘Now you’ve lost me – bomber?’
    ‘Comes from behind.’ As Cora spoke, an auburn-haired woman did just that, slipping a cream-kid hand under the man’s arm. With a fleeting glance for Cora, she said something in a breathy voice. Not in English, in German.
    Lots of foreigners came to Pettrew & Lofthouse, and because she’d learned French from her father, Cora was often asked to show them around the make-room. French was the language of the hat trade, but she’d picked up a smattering of German, too, because some of the best Berlin department stores regularly sent their buyers.
    So she knew that the woman disliked being in a crowd and hated the smell of frying food. And when she gazed up at her companion and murmured, ‘ Nicht so, Dietrich ?’ Cora sucked in her cheeks, assuming they were saying how much like Marlene Dietrich she looked. It was only when the man replied without looking at her that Cora realised he must be called Dietrich.
    He hadn’t sounded foreign. Though, now she thought of it, he did choose his words carefully, the way a stamp collector picks rare pieces from a box with tweezers. It explained why they were there, alongside the suburban matrons and stripy-suited commercial men, instead of swanning in the members’ enclosure. Poor saps must have bought the wrong passes.
    The man called Dietrich recalled Cora’s presence. He said, in English, to his companion, ‘This young lady thinks Mid-day Sun could be a bomber.’
    Auburn brows lifted. ‘Really?’ She sounded bored. Like many women there today, she wore white from head to toe. A silver fox collar made a sumptuous frame for her face and her clutch coat revealed a dress of snowy chiffon. She wore silk stockings and kid shoes that the grass hadn’t yet marked. A triple row of pearls closed the gap between glove and sleeve. As for her hat, Cora couldn’t take her eyes from it. White beaver belly, its crown formed two V-shaped peaks, like yacht sails at different points on the horizon. Or, if you were being fanciful, it was a trifle topping. It would have looked silly on virtually every woman in the world, but on this one, it was almost perfect.
    Almost. Impelled by an impulse she couldn’t explain, Cora spoke: ‘Your hat’s crying out for a brim. It’s too narrow to balance your collar. Either you need more hat, or less fur.’
    Had they been anywhere else, deafening silence would have greeted this remark, but as the Derby runners were now parading past the stands, her impudence went no further than Dietrich and the woman, who asked in heavily accented English, ‘You are a hat-maker?’
    ‘Yes . . . I’m – I’m a milliner. Quite a famous one, actually.’
    ‘Indeed?’ The woman appraised Cora’s black-feathered hat