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The way Izzie said “we” didn’t pass Sylvia by, but she pressed on. “Then you’ll need someone from the outside. Perhaps I could help you hire someone.”

“I can’t hire someone. There isn’t time, and besides”—Izzie cleared her throat—“I don’t know if we could afford to pay another member of staff.”

“Is the shop not doing well?” she asked with surprise.

Izzie shifted in her seat. “I don’t know.”

“Haven’t you had the chance to look at the account books yet?” she asked, looking around.

“I haven’t found them.” Izzie opened the top drawer of the desk, drew out a ledger, and dropped it on the desktop. “Until then, you’re welcome to work through the orders and try to make sense of it.”

Sylvia’s stomach soured. “What do you mean, ‘make sense of it.’ ”

“It looks as though Mum kept a good record of orders, but I have no idea what expenses have been paid. To find out what the business actually has by way of funds will require going through orders placed, inventory, invoices, and wages and reverse engineering the lot,” said Izzie.

“But she must have been keeping records. How else would she know how much she has to pay in tax?” she asked, panic rising in her voice.

“Sylvia, I can’t even find Mum’s post office savings book to see what she had in her personal account.”

Sylvia stared at her sister, aghast. “What happened?”

Izzie sighed. “The war. We were doing well enough, I think, then war broke out and two of our girls left to join up. They said they wanted their choice of service. Clever of them, really.

“Then rationing started and everything became harder. Orders began to slow when people started to have to use coupons.”

“Can the business even survive?” Sylvia asked.

“Yes, of course it can,” Izzie snapped. “We still have orders from our loyal customers. Maybe not as many as before, I’ll grant you, but business will pick up again once rationing ends.”

“And when will that be?” she asked.

Izzie’s expression hardened. “We just have to weather things for a little bit longer.”

Sylvia sat back heavily in her chair. “Did you know?”

“What?” Izzie asked.

“Did you know before Mum died how dire things had become?”

“Things are not dire, Sylvia.” Izzie sniffed. “And this line of questioning does not solve the problem of me having to go off to serve.”

“No. No, of course not,” she said, backing away from the topic.

“Could you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Run Mrs. Shelton’s,” said Izzie.

She stared at her sister. “Are you serious?”

“You said yourself that you practically used to run the business for Mum.”

She held a hand up. “I did not say that. I said that I did the accounts. There were a number of things that Mum never let me do. I wouldn’t know the first thing about running a dress shop.”

“Miss Reid can take care of the customers,” Izzie insisted. “She might not like it, but she’ll become accustomed to it. You would only need to pay the bills as they come in.”

Sylvia began to shake her head. “You know that’s not true, Izzie. Making sure that a business stays on its feet, especially when we have no idea what the state of it really is? That’s a huge job. I’m not the right person for it.”