The basement man cave was almost ready. I was really looking forward to clearing the upstairs study’s shelves of all of GC’s aviation and DIY books so that I could make the emptied room mine (all mine). I already had my patchwork cushions on stand-by to scatter around the redecorated room. GC’s wife JC would be just next door. It would be so much fun for we girls to be close together on the ground floor with GC installed just below.

I took a moment to reflect on how JC had gone up in the world. Here she was now, the owner of a Manchester mansion where there were enough rooms for guests to be allocated their own quarters. She’d come a long way since her days as a poverty-stricken laundress.