Sure enough, the bra has kept its promise. Not that she’s got much to lift and separate, mind, but she’s making the most of it. Isn’t that what Mam told her to do, this afternoon as over a cuppa? To stop worrying Pet and make the most of what you’ve got. Then came the usual: she’d done well to get a man like that, what with her being a bookworm. And three bairns too. Although Jonathan never liked to hear his children referred to as ‘bairns’ and Mam should know that by now.

She thinks of her bairns. Children. Imagines they’ll be eating their tea now and reminds herself she means supper. Mam will never understand why these words matter so much to Jonathan, she thinks, reaching into the wardrobe for her blue cotton dress, the one she wears to summer fetes, and church when they go. Sober but elegant, the sort of dress she’d wear every day if they had more cash. Not that they’re poor. This is a negotiation for a partnership, not a plea for a takeover.

“It’s as if we were having an ordinary dinner at home,” Jonathan said when he told her about the visitor. “We must behave as if we’ve not gone to any trouble.”

She puts on the radio and plonks herself in front of her dressing table. Her three reflections eye up the new set and blow dry. Took an age that, the hairdresser putting it in curlers, then all that time under the drier. But it was worth it. Her hair’s waving over her crown like a honey-coloured sea. The news comes on. More about the heatwave and the drought. 1976 is the driest summer since records began, says the man. Hair’ll probably be lank and sweaty by the time their guest arrives, strands of it sticking to her forehead.

At least she’s got everything else under control. The lamb’s slow roasting in the oven. The potatoes are peeled, the carrots chopped, and the peas shelled. And she’s made a canapé hedgehog. Got the idea from a magazine she read under the drier. It’s very simple really: cheese, pineapple chunks and glacé cherries threaded onto cocktail sticks and stuck into a grapefruit half. Looks smashing. They can have that with the sherry and twiglets and peanuts before the roast lamb. Jonathan told her to cook something British. “Something traditional,” he said. “Tonight’s about creating the right impression.”

~

Mr Jenson, Jerry Jenson, is a Canadian, a businessman from Toronto, which is important because as Jonathan’s pointed out, you don’t want to go around accusing these people of being Americans. “They don’t like that. No need to even mention the United States unless it comes up in conversation.” Mr Jenson approached Jonathan some time ago about a potential partnership. “Investment,” Jonathan told her, that could help Charlton’s fulfil its true potential and expand into the dynamic global business it should be. When she asked him what that meant, he patted her hand and smiled, but what she’d really wanted was an answer.  

Jonathan ushers him in off the doorstep, saying “May I introduce my wife?”

She’s only had a moment to take off her pinny but now she smiles and, aware of her height, bends a little at the knee so as not to intimidate. Jenson extends his hand, glances straight ahead at her lifted, separated breasts before meeting her eyes. His upper lip curls on one side when he smiles. It’s disarming. She’s hot, says something about warm weather and wouldn’t they like a drink, at which Jonathan rubs his hands together. “Good idea!” he says, and steers Mr Jenson into the lounge.

Mr Jenson turns down the sherry, lolls in Jonathan’s armchair, says he’ll have gin and tonic if they’ve got it. So she rushes to the kitchen for ice and lemon thinking Jonathan was right about not making too much effort. Jenson’s not even wearing a tie. Beige slacks and a tennis shirt. She hears them chatter or rather Jenson chatter. “…staying at the Gosforth Park Hotel”, he says only he pronounces it “Goes forth” and Jonathan doesn’t correct him. “It’s decent,” says Jenson, and she thinks of its long sweeping drive and fancy dining room. She brings the ice and lemon in on a tray, with the canapé hedgehog. Jonathan frowns when he sees it. She knows what he’s thinking: that it looks like she’s trying to impress. He passes Jenson his gin and tonic and tells him to help himself to peanuts and twiglets. She holds the halved grapefruit within Jenson’s reach so that he can help himself to a spear of cheese and glace cherry, but he holds up his hand in a ‘stop’ gesture as if he were directing traffic. She leaves it on the coffee table and goes back to the kitchen.

The roast lamb is resting on the side waiting to be carved, filling the kitchen with steam. She puts on the kettle to make the gravy and reaches in the cupboard for the Bisto granules. The carrots are bubbling on the stove, the peas coming to the boil. The heat is rising to her face, which she dabs with the hem of her pinny. Mustn’t disturb her make-up. She grabs the Evening Chronicle off the side and fans her underarms, staring at the hostess trolley. She should be putting the plates in the oven to warm, but she doesn’t. She fans and wonders what the news is. She’s not had a chance to look at the paper yet tonight.

A few months back – the day she took herself off to see the new shopping centre at Eldon Square, the day she’d not been able to resist popping into Fenwicks – Jonathan had folded the Evening Chronicle, tutting and shaking his head, clutching the bowl of his pipe and chewing down on its stem. She thinks of it now: how he’d complained about the women’s libbers. “Can you imagine?” he’d said, “Here in Newcastle?” According to Jonathan, they were everywhere nowadays, burning their bras. And she’d thought of the Fenwicks bag she’d hidden under the bed. Her secret. Now the straps that cross her heart feel itchy with newness. She fans harder to keep cool, picturing a bunch of rowdy, shorthaired women outside the Civic Centre reaching round in unison to unclasp their bras, shrugging and wriggling and pulling their bras through their sleeves in one whoosh of togetherness. Like changing for games at school only with greater meaning. Is that what happened when they came to Newcastle? Does one of them go round with a match, setting light to each bra in turn? You’d have to be careful mind, not to burn your fingers, because a bra must be very flammable what with all that nylon. The flame would soar up. A waste of good underwear, she thinks, as the kettle starts to whistle.

~

Jenson doesn’t eat much, says something about his fitness regime, pats his belly and winks as he tells her he likes to keep trim. There’s that smile again with the curled lip. Jonathan’s fumbling with his serviette, doesn’t notice, just says, “Good for you! An example to us all!”

She can see her husband is sweating under his jacket and tie. Jenson pushes a piece of carrot into the glossy brown gravy, leaves it there and asks her if she works at all. She shakes her head, checking the table in case she’s forgotten anything.

“Used to work in a library, didn’t you Darling!” says Jonathan. “One of the reasons I married her – good for the children’s education!” Jonathan’s too busy sawing into his roast lamb to see how Jenson lets his gaze linger where the new bra chafes across her heart. He raises his glass. “To libraries!”

She puts down her knife and fork, raises her own glass. She can tell he’s no interest in libraries, so she won’t bother telling him it wasn’t just any library, that it was an architectural triumph created by Sir Basil Spence, right in the centre of Newcastle. She doesn’t mention its clean edges and the round lights that shone down from the ceiling like they’d beam her into the future. Nor how Jonathan had called it a concrete beast when she first met him. She’d explained it was in the Brutalist school of architecture. “There you go then!” he’d said, “Same thing, different name. Brutish. Beastly.” They’d laughed at the time. She’d thought it was a witty exchange. But she won’t tell Jenson about it, why should she? The conversation’s moved on anyway.

“I always say, Mr Jenson…”

“Jerry, please…” he says, playing with his mash.

“Jerry. I always say that nuts and bolts are the ‘nuts and bolts’ of any engineering project.”

Jenson smiles and raises his eyebrows. “Well, I have to hand it to you Jonny, you’ve got a great little factory.”

“Thank you. It’s Jonathan actually, but never mind…”

“And this food is delicious. British home cooking! A real treat!”

She smiles though she’s not sure he’s paying a compliment, the way he said, a real treat in that tone.

But he’s talking to her husband now. “You’re not worried about strikes? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m just a foreigner! Whadda I know? But it seems like you have a lot of strikes here in England. Like one guy gets upset, says the word and they’re all out.”

“Charlton’s is a family firm. The staff is loyal. We don’t have to worry on that score.”

She heard about some women striking recently, somewhere down south, wanting equal pay. Equal pay for equal work. And as they talk, she wonders whether the women in Jonathan’s factory get equal pay. Not that it’s anything to do with her.

“But what you say is true, Jerry,” says her husband. “The unions in this country hold us all to ransom. So, what’s a man to do?”

Jenson shrugs.

“Export. Find new markets abroad and point out that Charlton’s Nuts and Bolts aren’t just ordinary nuts and bolts. They’re crafted by generations of highly skilled workers. You ask, where did the Industrial Revolution – the very revolution that changed everything for mankind, made everything possible from railways to space travel – where did it all begin?”

Jenson shakes his head as if mystified. She thinks about the trifle in the fridge, whether she should clear the plates. She’s heard all this before. She knows where it all began.

“Here,” says her husband, “Here in the Northeast, with coal and steam. And, for the record, I’d like to see anyone try to get coal out of the ground or build a space rocket without using nuts and bolts.”

“You couldn’t do it Jonny…”

“Jonathan.”

“You couldn’t do it!”

“No, you couldn’t.”

Mr Jenson raises his glass. “It’s a great little company and with the right investment, it could grow into something huge. Just needs a lift,” he says turning to her, “to help it stand out!” And his lip curls as he raises his glass again.

~

After the meal, Jonathan suggests they take their coffee in the lounge “to get to the heart of the matter” and she knows then. She’d told him earlier not to agree to anything, not to shake on anything. Not yet. Please. And he’d tutted and told her she was sweet, pecked her forehead and said, “You look nice. Is that a new lipstick?”

Now she’s mute, forces a smile and must make the coffee. She watches them cross the tiny hall, as if this were some grand Victorian house like the ones on Montague Avenue, the sort of house he’s promised they’ll move to if all goes well. She picks up the dishes from the table and stacks them onto the hostess trolley, which she wheels clattering out of the dining-room and u-turns into the hot sticky kitchen. She puts the kettle on and heaps Nescafé into the coffee pot. It’s Denbyware. Mr Jenson should be impressed, but somehow, she has the feeling he won’t be. He won’t notice the Denbyware anymore than he noticed the cut-glass trifle bowl. That was a wedding present. The kettle boils. She must fill the coffee pot, set out the cups, the after-dinner mints, the sugar and the cream. She carries in the coffee tray, puts it down lightly, careful not to disturb their talk. On the way out she picks up the untouched grapefruit and slips out with a smile when they nod their appreciation.

Back at the sink she tries to breathe. Fresh air, that’s what she needs. She opens the window and waits for a blue-tinted breeze fresh from the North Sea. Salty. Clean. What she gets is thick and cloying. She closes her eyes, tries to picture the cool sea, but all she sees is a stew of brine, where fishermen sit idling and dolphins drift listless in the water. The sea is not its usual self, no longer the swirling mass of pewter grey she knew growing up. For a moment, she has a bird’s eye view, as if she were a gull eyeing up the customers who spill out of chip shops, as if she were scanning newspaper wrappers for fish suppers before flying north across the water. She feels herself rise on a current of warm air, so buoyant it takes her away from all this, from the kitchen and the pots, and the heat, from Jerry Jenson and his curling lip.

Laughter from the lounge brings her to her senses. She steadies herself at the kitchen sink, runs the tap, splashes her face. Remembers her make-up and grabs the pinny off the side to gently dab her face. She can’t breathe in this new bra; it’s binding her ribcage. She reaches round, finds the clasp, unfastens and, when the air has filled her lungs, she breathes.

~

She’s not visited the Central Library in years. She came back once or twice when she first married, but after Jonny was born, then the girls, well, life moved on. Heat bounces off the walkway, off the fluted concrete and the Brutalist slabs of dark grey. Inside is cooler.

She doesn’t recognise the girl at the front desk or the young man looking through the card index. But the carpet, that’s the same, just more faded and a little worn. She gazes up at the high ceiling and the long rows of books and walks over to a bank of shelves to run her finger over their spines. She’s time to browse and pulls a poetry collection off the shelf, just to weigh it in her hand and enjoy that musty paper smell as she leafs through the pages.

It’s a school day so the library is quiet and empty, until a couple of women come, heading towards the staircase, exchanging news and forgetting to keep their voices down. She almost tells them to shush but stops herself, looks back at the new girl at the front desk, the young man. Neither of them says anything to the noisy women. The door to the staircase cranks when they open it and takes an age to swing shut on its spring, squeaking all the while. She turns back to The Oxford Book of English Verse.

I took my heart in my hand

Now another woman comes rushing. And another. This one, in flares and a flouncy Indian top, smiles as she passes. The door cranks and whines as it slowly closes. Someone should oil it. More women come, some young, some more worn like the carpet. Like her. Each one heads for the stairs, opens the cranky door and leaves it closing squeakily behind her.

At last, the library’s peaceful, that staircase door closed. She turns back to the poem…

Let me fall or stand,

Let me live or die,

…until a small woman in a large orange sundress interrupts her. “Excuse me, do you know which room it’s in?”

She shrugs and shakes her head.

The small woman reaches in her tasselled bag. She pulls out a crumpled flyer, with smudged black print that reads, Women’s Liberation Movement … Central Library. That’s all she catches before the small woman dashes off to the cranky door.

As it whines, she goes back to the poem.

But this once hear me speak

On the other side of the frosted glass, the blurred orange sundress is climbing the stairwell, the sandalled feet about to disappear…

Yet a woman’s words are weak

But they don’t have to be, do they? Mam’s aren’t. “Make the most of what you’ve got,” she’d said. She snaps the book shut, rushes to the squeaking door, and slips through before it closes.