On the button

THE train hissed into the station, brakes squealing. Steam billowed along the platform, fogging windows and curling around Evie’s boots as she stepped down on to solid ground. “Watch your step, miss!”

ME? Post a Valentine’s card to a man – for you, Miss Dora?” Ellen, Dora Luscombe’s maid, gasped, her brown eyes wide with disbelief and curiosity. Studying her young mistress, bereft of her father jus

DOT didn’t mind ironing, not really. It gave her something to do with her hands, and the gentle hiss of steam was company enough on most mornings. The radio sat unplugged on the windowsill. She used t

NOTHING said “home” like the kitchen of Nant-y-Bri Farm at breakfast time. Delicious frying pan smells hung heavy in the air and the scrape of cutlery on willow pattern plates indicated the family had

L AURA phoned her mother, trying to keep her voice light. “Hello, Mum, I’ve got a bit of news,” she said. “Hannah’s moving in with her boyfriend. “I need to either get a new flatmate, or try to find s

IT was cold, even for a Northumberland January. In fact, it was freezing. A thin layer of ice cracked under Nancy’s feet as she walked to the outer harbour in the grey dawn, shards of it angling upwar