Freda had spent many hours of their friendship coaching Florence in improvements—to stand up straight and learn to carry books on her head （near impossible）， to discard her thick, pebble-glass spectacles whenever possible （which led to not infrequent bruising, unfortunately）， and to close her mouth when breathing and eating （which occasionally led to choking）。 Florence really should have her adenoids out, in Freda’s opinion. Florence’s mother had a friend who knew someone whose daughter supposedly had bled to death on the operating table while having her adenoids removed, which was why Florence was still in possession of hers. “Bleeding to death” sounded gloriously operatic to Freda’s ears. She was, of course, a connoisseur of the opera, having had all kinds of walk-on （and skip-on） parts when children were deemed a necessary addition to the scenery by the touring companies that came to York.
Florence’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ingram, were well off and Florence lived in a big, detached house out on Tadcaster Road that Freda spent a lot of time cycling to. Mrs. Ingram had a “daily”—which meant a woman—and the house always smelt of cleaning products—Brasso and ammonia and wax polish, scents that were never present in Freda’s home in the Groves. The downstairs rooms were half-panelled in oak and the floors were something called “parquet,” which was solid and polished and a contrast to the torn lino in Freda’s house.
The Ingrams had a prodigiously prolific garden. “The garden of unearthly delights,” Mr. Ingram called it and laughed. Freda guessed he was referring to something. He did that a lot. Shakespeare, Dickens, Wordsworth, recited in a special performance voice—Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer or It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done. He would pause for a few seconds, waiting to see if Freda had caught the reference, and when it was clear that （inevitably） she had not, he would then explain it. He was a teacher in a private boys’ school, where Freda supposed he must do this kind of thing all day long. It was incredibly boring, but it was the price that Freda had to pay in order to be included in Florence’s well-ordered home life.
Florence attended the Bar Convent school for girls because the Ingrams were Catholics. She had been adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Ingram when she was a baby. Freda had spent many years trying to make herself look equally adoptable in the Ingrams’ eyes, but they never took the bait.
The Ingrams had used a religious agency to find a baby and Florence had been delivered to them late one night, by a nun. She had been left on the doorstep of a Catholic convent in a snowstorm when she was just a few hours old. “It reminds one a little of Oliver Twist, does it not?” Mr. Ingram said. （“Mm-hm,” Freda said non-committally. She had heard of Oliver Twist but thought it was a kind of biscuit.）
“At least Florence’s mother might have been a Catholic,” Mrs. Ingram said, as if that mitigated the sin of abandonment. （Catholicism was “mumbo-jumbo,” according to Duncan, who said he was “lapsed,” which made Vanda snort with laughter and say, “Is that what you call it?”）
Florence found her mysterious nativity fascinating. Where had she come from? She liked to imagine that she was being kept safe in secret by the Ingrams until she could claim her rightful birthright. “A throne somewhere, perhaps,” she speculated. Freda didn’t like to dash Florence’s hopes by pointing out that it was more likely that she was simply an unfortunate mistake on the part of her real mother. （“Born out of wedlock,” Vanda said when Freda told them about her friend. “A bastard,” Duncan said more straightforwardly.）
Freda even taught Florence how to ride a bike. Florence’s parents had bought a really good Raleigh loop-frame for her birthday that Freda coveted, but they had never managed to get her up in the saddle. Florence took for ever to get the hang of it, wobbling and weaving all over the place, and she and Freda had to lie to her parents about how many times she fell off, but eventually they were able to go on long bike rides together, to Elvington and Bolton Percy and on one heroic occasion （there were hills, Florence wasn’t good at hills） all the way to Brandsby and back.
As the daughter of a Rowntree’s employee, even a dead one, Freda was able to enjoy all manner of advantages provided by his beneficent employers—Christmas parties, the Yearsley swimming pool, sports days, summer fêtes, amateur dramatics. Freda always managed to include Florence in these perks. You would think the Ingrams would be grateful, but “They think you lead me astray,” Florence said, contentedly sucking on a liquorice bootlace as they took a promenade around the city walls. Freda liked the view of York from the walls, it was as if they were backstage or behind the scenes of the city, quite different from being at ground level in the tightly knotted ancient streets.