My disobedient heart lifted into my throat as I turned around.

"Hello, Charlie," I said.

"How's yourself today?" he said.

"I'm all right. What's down there?"

"Folks as wish to be left alone," said Charlie. He leaned against the china stall.

"I see."

"Some parts of Mile End ain't strickly respectable."

I looked at the children sitting on their doorstep. The little girl was rolling a cane hoop towards the wall opposite and catching it as it bounced back.

"I suppose you're right," I said. I hadn't really been tempted to venture down there; I knew all about alleyways and stranger danger.

"Here, let me walk you back to mum's."

"Aren't you busy?"

"Between deliveries. What've you been up to?"

"Buying knickers," I said, darting a look up to see how he'd react.

He looked down at me, part amused, part scandalised. "Have you now, odd 'un?"

"Mmhmm. And then I spoke to the woman at the Receiving Home about a job. I don't want to impose on your mother's generosity more than I already have."

"Pish," said Charlie, disregarding that sentiment. "Why is it that place interests you so much? Most try to think about it as little as possible."

"No reason," I said, tucking my hands into the long sleeves of the jumper. "Listen, do you know of a good place for me to stay?"

"What's wrong with where you are?" said Charlie.

I bit my lip.

"Once you're working, you can pay mum a little bit of rent. To be frank she'll be glad of the company with Herb in Ireland and Enid getting ready to be a mum herself."

"I'll ask Mrs. Lawrence about it this afternoon," I said, "but if she says no, you have to help me find somewhere else. Tonight."

"Cross my heart, I will, odd 'un." He reached out and clasped my upper arm. "See you at tea."

When I got back to Maplin Road and told Mrs. Lawrence about the Receiving Home, her response closely echoed Charlie's: "Now what are you wanting with that place?" she said.

For a moment I considered telling her I was from the future and I'd seen a baby who I was pretty sure would one day be my grandmother being given up to the orphanage and I was convinced that tracking down that baby's mother was the only way I could get back to my own time.

Instead, I said, "I thought they might have a job for me."

"If you say so, dearie," said Mrs. Lawrence.

"I also asked around the shops on Mile End Road." Lie. "I bumped into Charlie..."

"Did you, now?"

"He suggested that you might want to take a lodger. To help with the rent and expenses, and the like."

"Hark at him looking after his old mum." Mrs. Lawrence was engaged in wringing out bedding linens, but she managed to imbue the action with a certain meaningfulness.

"I told him that you wouldn't want that," I rushed on, "and that he should help me find somewhere else to live as soon as possible. You've already been so kind to me, Mrs. Lawrence. I couldn't bear to impose on you."

"Nonsense." She lifted up the sheet, then pegged it onto a clothesline strung across the kitchen. "If Charlie says it's so, it's so."

"That doesn't seem right," I said. "It's your house."

"Only a'cause of him. He's the best son alive, my Charlie, and he likes you. That's enough for me."

"What about Amy? Will she mind sharing her room indefinitely?"

"That hussy earns her money like a horse and spends it like an ass," said Mrs. Lawrence. "She'll be glad to have another body helping with the costs of the place." She acquired a steely aspect. "If she's got any sense, that is."

"I would be incredibly grateful." And if Amy objected or Mrs. Lawrence felt she'd been pushed into it... well, when I got back to my own time, all this would just be another knot in history that only I remembered. A wave of loneliness swept over me.

Charlie got home around 4pm, in high spirits. "Listen, odd 'un," he said. "Let me take you out to the pictures or something tonight."

"What's the occasion?" said Mrs. Lawrence.

"Emma finding a home with us, a'course," said Charlie.

I was caught in two opposing currents. I doubted that the language of dating had changed so much in a century that a man and a woman going to the movies together meant something different in this time. And in another time, or if I were a different girl, I would have been saying yes to Charlie before the offer had even been finished.

The idea swirled around in my brain: sitting in a movie theatre with him, he whispering something in my ear, winding his fingers in mine, leaning in close enough to kiss. He had nice lips. I'd be able to feel his smile as we kissed.

But Charlie was going to marry Emma Connolly. He was going to help raise Grandma Alice, and have three more children, grow old, and bounce my mother and her siblings on his knee. And when I went back to my own time, I'd go nursing a broken heart for a man who would never even meet me.

"Enid were just saying this morning she were dying for a night out," said Mrs. Lawrence.

Charlie smacked the table with enthusiasm. "We'll make a party of it. Albie and Enid, and Amy loves the pictures. Sound good, odd 'un? You've earned a bit of fun, I reckon."

... or perhaps I was completely wrong about Charlie. Perhaps it was all in my head and he was just a genuinely nice guy who thought I needed cheering up.

"Sounds good," I said, awash in a mixture of disappointment and relief.

"I think Han left one of her old party dresses in that box of things," Mrs. Lawrence said complacently.

* * *

We walked down to the Mile End Empire.

On the way we passed the People's Palace, an imposing three-storey white building that loomed over the humble red brick terraces that surrounded it. Charlie pointed it out and said it had been built by a philanthropic society to bring culture and wholesome pursuits to the East End, and opened by no less a personage than Queen Victoria herself.

I learned that at the centre of the complex was an assembly room where there were socials most nights of the week, with a proper dance on Sunday nights. The building also housed a theatre, gymnasium, swimming pool, library and winter garden. I wondered whether this impressive building had survived the century. Probably destroyed in the Blitz. It stuck out like a sore thumb.

At the theatre, we bought our tickets and joined a trickle of people wandering into the cinema.

To one side of the lobby there was a salon. Enid peered through and made a beeline for one of the tables. Charlie, Amy, Albie and I followed.

"Drink?" said Charlie.

"I'd love a beer," I replied.

He gave me an amused look. "Coming right up."

"Oh, a beer drinker," said Amy, winding her arm in mine.

"Why, what do you drink?"

"Sherry and lemon," said Amy with an airy wave. She glanced around the saloon and paused. "Excuse me--"

I followed her gaze towards the back of the room. A pretty young woman in a drop-waisted dress was joined by a young man bringing drinks.

Whatever Amy had intended to say died in her throat. "Never mind," she said. "Come on, let's us sit with Enid."

For a moment, a look of desolation flashed across her face. It was gone almost as soon as it appeared.

Charlie was back with drinks. "Here you go, odd 'un," he said. "Beer for you, me and Albie, and sherry for Amy and Enid. To home and family!"

We echoed the toast. I noticed that Amy was looking over at the couple on the other side of the bar again.

"Are they your friends?" I said.

She gave me a complicated look. "Cathy and Tom. I work with Cathy."

"Why don't you go and say hello?"

Amy shrugged. "I'll see her tomorrow," she said, and turned her shoulder on the couple.

Albie and Charlie had been unloading a ship called the Isabelle, full of crates of off-the-rack clothes from America. Enid complained that they should have snaffled some for her and Amy.

"Make Albie do it," said Charlie. "He's a perm. They'll never get rid of him."

"Perm?" I said.

Charlie leaned over to me. "Albie's employed permanently with the Port of London Authority, whereas I have to turn up every morning to the gates and see whether they'll take me on."

"What they always does," Albie interjected. "If you wasn't so set on keeping up your dad's delivery rounds, you could be a perm too."

"Pshaw," said Charlie.

So the conversation continued while I finished my beer and listened.

Although she seemed as if she were paying attention to Albie and Charlie, Amy was worrying at the brooch she had pinned to her dress. She had opened the fastening with one hand and was snapping it shut rhythmically as she listened.

Then she snapped it too hard, and it flew off her dress and landed on the carpet near my foot.

"Oh, let me get it," I said and leaned down to pick it up.

For a moment it sat innocently cradled in my fingertips, and then it began to get warm.