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“Watch the door,” said Izzie as she entered sideways.

“Doesn’t it open any farther?” she asked.

“No.”

Sylvia angled her body to slip in, staring at the mess around her in despair.

“I haven’t had a chance to properly tidy since the funeral,” said Izzie quickly.

“It looks just like it did when I started doing the accounts. Do you know how long it took me to put everything in order and set up a system that our mother could follow?” she asked.

“It’s just a little messy,” said Izzie, immediately defensive. “Mum had a lot of things to do, and so do I.”

Sylvia picked up what looked like an invoice. It was for fourteen yards of patterned cotton lawn ordered from Liberty of London and dated nearly five years ago. There were none of the marks on the top that Sylvia had used to keep track of when an invoice had been received, whether the goods were acceptable, and when it had been paid. Looking at it, she couldn’t tell whether her mother had seen it let alone settled it.

“I left our mother with clear instructions—”

“Fourteen years ago,” Izzie cut her off. “You can’t expect everything to be the same after all that time.”

Sylvia pursed her lips, not wanting to admit that it felt strange that Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions hadn’t remained frozen in amber just as she’d left it.

“And why do you keep calling her ‘our mother’?” Izzie continued. “You used to call her Mum.”

“You can’t expect everything to remain the same. Didn’t you just say so yourself?”

Izzie sniffed before shutting the office door and scooping up a pile of papers off one of the two wooden chairs squeezed into the small space in front of their mother’s desk.

“You’re not going to take her chair?” Sylvia asked, nodding to the worn leather chair behind the desk.

“No,” said Izzie.

A petty part of Sylvia thought for a moment about taking the chair for herself, but then she remembered all of the times she’d seen her mother in it, hunched over the books or counting out notes and coins to make a deposit at the bank. Instead, she sat facing her sister, primly crossing her ankles and folding her hands one over the other.

They sat for a moment in silence, the only sound the ticking of old pipes in the building’s walls. Finally, Sylvia asked, “What did you want to see me about?”

Izzie seemed to brace herself. “Have you read the newspaper this morning?”

“I haven’t had the time,” she lied. The truth was that until Izzie’s telephone call she hadn’t even emerged from her bedroom because she’d been waiting for Hugo to leave. Mrs. Atkinson had only just brought her first cup of tea when the telephone rang. The paper, which was usually laid next to her place at the table when Hugo was not at home, had been untouched.

“Then you don’t know?”

“I don’t know what?” she asked.

“I’m being conscripted.”

Her brows shot up. “What?”

“All women between twenty and thirty are being conscripted. I need to register by mid-month. You do too, actually—you’re under forty—but you won’t be required to serve. At least not yet.”

They couldn’t call Izzie up. They just couldn’t. Her sister was meant to be here at Mrs. Shelton’s Fashions, the one place in the world Izzie loved.

But instead of saying all that, Sylvia asked, “What about the shop?”

Izzie started to speak but then stopped herself.

“Perhaps Miss Reid could take it on?” Sylvia asked.

Izzie shook her head. “Not Miss Reid. She’s already working flat out as it is. If we want to have any hope of staying open, it’s vital that she remain focused on sewing.”