She breathes in the scent of turpentine and wax and linseed oil. I am not your model yet – somebody you can stare at unannounced for five minutes! But when the door opens, Louis smiles at her and her outrage falls away. It looked like you were grazing on the potted plant.’ ‘And have been for the last five minutes? I must admit I nearly gave myself away when that cart burst past. Louis salutes her from the first-floor window. Iris leaps back, trips over a pot, and stubs her toe. ‘Are you going to ring the bell, or would you prefer to have your lesson on the street?’

The paper painting in her hand, tucked into a sleeve of fabric pinched from Mrs Salter, crumples in the wind. But then, she has no claim to any of that. Only those who season their speech with phrases like ‘critics’, ‘Royal Academy’ and ‘exhibition’ would know it. She feels a brief pride over her inclusion in that inner circle. She smiles at it, a sly drawing of a line separating those who know the initials’ true meaning, and the uninitiated who do not. She hovers her hand over the doorbell, and then reads the plaque beneath it. But now, she thinks she looks like a poor maiden aunt, not the sort of person likely to indulge in perfect triangles of cucumber sandwiches or cream so rich it gave her a stomach-ache. She used to like the way it pulled in her waist, the pert sleeves that made her arms look slender. It is her finest outfit, greyed cotton that was once blue. She picks at a soup stain on the sleeve of her gown.

She wears a small silk rosette on her chest, a Christmas gift from Albie, and she smooths its ragged edges. Once the cart has rounded the corner, she clears her throat and looks down at her dress. The straw-strewn lane is barely passable when a horse and cart trots by, and Iris almost has to crouch in a plant pot, a fern tickling her face. Ferns and palms froth out of every orifice over window boxes, out of terracotta pots and planters, around the sides of hanging baskets. The house is both shabbier and finer than Iris imagined tall, narrow and brick, with the look of a rake gone to seed.

The doll factory summary