KAY BRELLEND
The Campbell Road Girls

For Susan, Carole, Jackie, Gary – with love.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Read on for the Next Compelling Novel

About the Author

Also by Kay Brellend

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue
Summer 1930

‘You can’t mean it!’ Sophy Lovat stared at her youngest sister in astonishment. ‘You’re planning on handing in your notice and going back to Campbell Road? You gone nuts, Lucy Keiver?’

‘Course not. I won’t be there for more’n a few days, not if I can help it,’ Lucy replied defensively. ‘I’ll stop with Mum and Reg just while I’m between things. I can keep Mum company while I’m sorting this out.’ She drew from her serge skirt pocket a piece of paper and, having unfolded the crumpled scrap, scanned the advertisement for an assistant lady’s maid in a mansion in Bloomsbury. ‘Got an interview early next month, and if I get offered the job, I’ll be living in straightaway.’ Lucy could tell her explanation hadn’t impressed her sister. ‘Move back to the Bunk for good?’ she scoffed in an effort to save face. ‘I’m not that daft!’

‘After all I did to get you took on here!’ Sophy protested indignantly. ‘And you’ve done all right for yourself with my help. Out of the kitchen and upstairs in no time at all, weren’t you?’

‘It was different before, when the mistress was still alive.’ The staff at Lockley Grange still called their employer’s late wife ‘the mistress’. His current spouse was referred to as ‘the madam’, and invariably in a disparaging tone.

‘You can’t throw it all in ’cos you’ve had a bit of a disagreement with Mrs Lockley.’ Sophy was prowling back and forth outside the stable block while reasoning quietly with her sister; she was aware they might be overheard.

‘Weren’t a bit of a disagreement.’ Lucy’s wry grimace emphasised her point. She was also keeping a weather eye out in case any ears were flapping in the vicinity. ‘She called me an insubordinate wretch who should keep to her place. So I told her ...’ She hesitated and guilty colour stole into her cheeks. ’I told her a few home truths, so even if I don’t chuck it in, I’ll probably get chucked out.’ Lucy defiantly tilted her chin. ‘She’s never liked me and I know I ain’t alone in not liking her. Nobody here took to her from the start.’ Lucy stepped closer to hiss in her sister’s ear, ‘We all know she got John Drew sacked from the stables, and Edna couldn’t wait to work out her notice before she quit. If you’re honest, you know you ’n’ Danny don’t like her either.’

Sophy struck a finger to her lips and steered her sister roughly against the cover of brickwork.

Lucy had spoken the truth. Sophy and her husband, Danny, had been disappointed, to say the least, on being introduced to the master’s new wife. Celia was half his age and only two years older than his own daughter. Monica had wisely decided to decamp to live with her aunt in Yorkshire shortly after her stepmother moved in. Celia’s attitude to the staff from the start had been utter disdain, but Sophy and Danny Lovat, older and more mature than their colleagues, had tried to adopt a pragmatic outlook. They had a great deal to lose since they’d been promoted to the top jobs.

After eleven years working at Lockley Grange, and after a year of being man and wife, Danny and Sophy had been summoned to Mr Lockley’s study one afternoon. They’d turned up in trepidation, wondering what they’d done wrong, only to learn they’d been doing everything right. Sophy had been promoted to a new position of housekeeper and Danny to that of house steward. With hindsight they’d realised their employers had wanted to free themselves from running the Grange because they’d known their time together was limited. None of the servants had been aware of the mistress’s grave illness until near the end.

‘How about if I have a quiet word with the master?’ Sophy offered unconvincingly.

‘Oh, yeah,’ Lucy muttered sarcastically, ‘’cos that’s bound to work. We all know she’s got him wrapped right around her little finger. And we all know how she keeps him there,’ she added sourly. Lucy had previously held Mr Lockley in high estimation but her opinion of him had plummeted when she’d realised what a sucker he was.

Ever since the newlyweds had returned from honeymoon, guttural noises could be heard issuing from the master suite at any hour of the day or night, prompting salacious gossip in the servants’ hall. It had not gone unnoticed that the young madam engineered those passionate trysts, and that they invariably coincided with her getting her own way on something.

Sophy felt annoyed at having this bombshell dropped on her by Lucy. It was barely four months since Celia’s personal maid had abruptly quit and Sophy had been put in the same awkward spot, having tactfully to find excuses for a colleague who’d had enough. Through threat and bribery, Sophy had managed to persuade Edna Jones to work out two months’ notice despite the woman insisting she’d sooner give up her wages and scoot than stay and be bullied and belittled. Now Lucy, who had been Edna’s apprentice, was jacking in the same job and Sophy knew the master would question her over why her sister was leaving hot on Edna’s heels.

‘It’s time you learned to take a bit of discipline and curb your tongue, miss,’ Sophy snapped.

‘I’m not putting up with it!’ Lucy exclaimed. ‘I don’t mind doing me duties and a bit more besides, but I’m beggared if I’ll let her look at me like I’m something she’s just stepped in in the stables.’

Sophy cast an assessing look on her younger sister. She had an inkling why the madam constantly clashed with Lucy. Little Luce, as her youngest sister was affectionately known by her family, was too pretty by half.

Lucy had started in the kitchens at the Grange at fourteen. She’d recently turned eighteen and had blossomed from a gawky teenager into quite a beauty. Her hair was thick and had the colour and shine of ripe chestnuts; her large eyes were lushly fringed with sooty lashes, and an unusual shade of greenish blue. But Lucy also had their mother’s pride and fiery temper to balance her sweet looks. For the past year or so, during her transformation from girl to woman, Sophy had noticed her sister turning a few of their male colleagues’ heads. But Lucy could give as good as she got. She was neither shrinking violet nor prude, and always met the boys’ lusty impertinence with a few salty quips of her own.

‘We’ve all had a bellyful of her, but on the whole it’s a good place to live and work.’ Sophy gripped Lucy’s hands to emphasise what she was about to say. ‘Mr Lockley might be a silly old fool but deep down he is a decent man. She’s the master’s wife so we’ve all got to accept it and knuckle down—’

‘You knuckle down if you want to,’ Lucy spiritedly interrupted. ‘I’m getting out before there’s a right royal dingdong.’ She gave Sophy a significant nod. ‘’S’all right for you’n Danny, you report to the master, but now Edna’s scarpered I’m the one at her beck and call.’

‘Can’t believe you’re really going.’ Sophy sighed. ‘You might not get this position you’ve applied for. With unemployment like it is there could be dozens of women after it. What you going to do then? Move back in with Mum in that poxy hole?’

‘Gonna keep applying for jobs in London,’ Lucy answered briskly. ‘To tell you the truth, it’s not just about Mrs Lockley.’ She avoided Sophy’s eye and stared out at rolling, verdant countryside. ‘I’m bored stiff here.’ She gestured with a hand at the quiet scenery. ‘What is there to do on me day off ’cept go and stare at cows or the sea, or window-shop old-fashioned frocks I couldn’t afford even if I wanted one.’ She shrugged in frustration. ‘I want to go in some of the big London stores and wander around just looking at all the lovely clothes ... and Yardley compacts and lipsticks and perfumes ...’ She broke off and giggled. ‘Then I’d go down the market with Alice and Beth and buy a dress that looks the same but costs a few bob instead of a few pounds.’

‘We’ve got a market here!’ Sophy stated huffily.

‘Yeah,’Lucy agreed wryly. ‘When I want fresh fruit ’n’ veg I’ll know where to come. But a cheap costume or a fancy silk blouse that don’t take me for ever to save for is gonna be hanging up down Chapel Street or Petticoat Lane.’

Lucy knew her sister was confused and alarmed by what she’d said. Sophy and Danny had been sweethearts since school age. The only ambitions Sophy had ever had were marrying Danny and securing regular work. Lucy knew it was all very sensible and admirable but she wasn’t yet ready to settle for just that.

‘I’m too young to get stuck in a rut out in the sticks. I want a job in town.’ She gazed earnestly at Sophy. ‘I never knew what it was to work in London. This was me first job, and I’m grateful to you for getting it for me, but perhaps I’m a city girl at heart. I’m going back there, Sophe, to find out ... and that’s that.’

After a short silence, Sophy put out a hand. ‘Let’s have a look then.’

‘Won’t be leaving fer a while yet, anyhow, so can work out me notice and a bit more if you want. Interviews are being held next month ’cos the girl who’s leaving is going off to get married, so no rush as such.’ She handed over the paper for Sophy to read.

‘You can work out yer notice ’n’ all,’ Sophy said grumpily, frowning at the letter.

‘Probably be stuck on a pallet in an attic with a few others,’ Lucy admitted with a wry chuckle. But even if her quarters were just a shared top-floor dormitory, Lucy would jump at the chance of it. Without a glance at the place, she knew it would knock living in a dirty room in a tenement house in Campbell Road into a cocked hat. But at least she’d be closer to her poor, ailing mum and would be able to visit her on her days off.

‘Put your notice in then, if you want to,’ Sophy said, thrusting the paper back at her sister. ‘Go and see if smog suits you better’n fresh air. But mark my words: I reckon you might just find you’ve jumped out of the frying pan straight into the fire.’

The crunch of feet on gravel brought the two young women to atttention. Tim Lovat, Danny’s brother, who worked as the master’s valet, suddenly appeared around the side of the house and waved to them as he sprinted closer. ‘Mistress is after you, Lucy. Stomping round with her chops on her boots.’ He grinned. ‘Rather you than me.’

Chapter One
September 1930

‘If ... if ... if! I’m fooking sick of hearing about if!’

Reg Donovan shoved over two battered chairs as he strode towards the door. He’d hoped to escape further hostility between himself and the irate redheaded woman confronting him, arms akimbo. But Matilda Keiver was having none of that. Today she was prepared for him trying to take the coward’s way out. In a trice she was between him and the exit, though the exertion left her wincing and gasping. He’d listen to some more of what she’d got to say if it killed her. And it was what had nearly killed her that caused them constantly to scrap.

‘You might be fucking sick of hearing about it, Reg Donovan, but I ain’t,’ she wheezed. ‘Ain’t you in pain every minute of the day, is it? Ain’t you stuck indoors most o’ the time ’cos it’s an ordeal just getting down the stairs to nip to the shop. I’m suffering something chronic, and though it ain’t all your fault I blame you fer a good part of what happened.’

‘I can’t be having this argument over and over again wid yer, Tilly.’ Reg’s defeated plea for a truce had thickened his Irish brogue.

‘If you’d been where yer should’ve been that night, I wouldn’t be in the state I’m in, would I? Deny it, can you?’

‘I can’t! I know it ... you know it!’ Reg’s voice again thundered at the ceiling. ‘But what can I do about it now?’ His hands balled into fists close to his contorted features. ‘Give over about it, woman. I can’t stand having it thrown in me fooking face a hundred times a day.’

‘You can’t stand it ’cos it makes you feel guilty.’ Tilly was using the wall as support, whilst teetering on her toes in an attempt to keep her weight forward and away from the ache in her back.

Two years ago she’d come out of hospital after a stay of five and a half months following a dreadful fall that had almost killed her. It had finished off the man who’d deliberately sent them both hurtling out of a first-floor window in Campbell Road to certain death, impaled on railings below. Jimmy Wild had expired almost instantly, but then he’d already been mortally wounded when he’d turned up, intending to take Matilda to hell with him. Despite several broken bones and an iron spike piercing her waist, Tilly had miraculously lived to tell the tale ... over and over again, according to Reg. And Reg had had a bellyful of hearing it.

Despite her extraordinary luck in having survived, eating away at Tilly like a cancer was the knowledge that if Reg, the man she’d hoped to marry shortly after that stormy summer evening, had done what he’d set out to do and fetched them home a couple of brown ales, she’d have completely escaped Jimmy Wild’s lethal malice. Jimmy had always been a coward when it came to a fair fight with a man; he would have crawled away to die alone had Reg been the one to open the door to him that night. But instead of joining her in a drink at home the selfish git had forgotten about her brown ales and gone to the Duke with a pal for a few whiskies.

‘You got to admit now, you let Jimmy in that night, Tilly. No point kidding yourself over it.’ Reg had edged closer to the door and casually manoeuvred a hand in readiness to yank it open. He felt sorry for Tilly, but not a lot more, and he knew pity wasn’t enough to keep him with her. At forty-nine she was a decade older than he was. Once the age gap had been unnoticeable – in fact at times he’d had trouble keeping up with her – but now she looked her age. The stiffness in her bones following the accident sometimes had her hobbling like a pensioner instead of sashaying about as she had a few years previously. She’d taken a few tumbles since she’d been out of hospital, which had set back her recovery, but she was too proud and stubborn to heed anybody’s warning to take things easy or accept help with her chores.

The good times had gone; the only passion the engaged couple now shared was during fights and arguments. She wasn’t even a drinking partner for him any more. She’d been a patient for a long time in a Spartan hospital, and enforced abstinence had curbed Tilly’s addiction to heavy drinking. To dull her aches and pains she’d down a few tots at home so she didn’t have to smarten up and drag herself out. But Reg considered himself still a young man. He needed a bit of a social life and a breath of fresh air outside of the stinking room on the first floor of the tenement house in Campbell Road that they called home. Reg knew he needed to get away from her, not only so he could calm down, but to decide whether he ever wanted to come back. If it took a bit of honest cruelty to cut himself free he was prepared to use it.

‘You brought a lot of this on yourself, Tilly. You’d known for years that Jimmy Wild was no good. You told me yourself he was an evil fooker. Yet you invited him in.’ Reg pointed accusingly at her. ‘You’re a stupid woman and you’ve got nobody to blame for the state you’re in but yourself. It’s time to face up to it.’

It was the first time Tilly had heard that from him and shock dropped her jaw. Usually Reg pinned the blame for her attempted murder squarely on Jimmy and recounted what he’d like to do to the bastard to pay him back, if only he could.

She whacked away his blunt finger quivering close to her nose. ‘I reckon you’re at fault and you’d better fucking face up to it!’ she suddenly roared, her blue eyes almost popping from her head in fury. ‘And if yer don’t like hearing the truth of it you know where the bleedin’ door is.’

‘Well, if you’ll move aside I’ll be out and leave you in peace.’

Matilda felt her guts tighten; he meant it this time. He wanted to go, not just to cool down, but for good. She flung back her auburn head, exposing silver wings close to her temples where her fiery locks were fading. For a moment she was close to capitulation and apology but her pride tilted up her chin an inch higher and she shifted aside. ‘Go on then, get out and good riddance.’ She limped back towards the wooden table, picked up her cold cup of tea and gulped at it. She didn’t even turn her head when she heard the door bang shut.

‘He’ll be back, Mum, when he’s had time to calm down.’

‘He won’t be back.’ Tilly’s dull eyes settled on the groceries her daughter Alice had tipped onto the table but she didn’t elaborate on how she knew she’d been abandoned.

She’d heard Reg creep in a few nights ago and gather together his meagre bits and pieces. She’d pretended to be asleep although an inner voice had been urging her to rear up haughtily onto an elbow and bawl at him to sling his hook. She’d lain there undecided before wearily concluding she’d no more stomach than he had for another slanging match. So she’d listened to his soft footfalls, and doors and drawers opening and closing, until the key had again grated in the lock and he’d taken himself off for good. As the tears had trickled to dampen her pillow she’d impatiently dashed them away, and with them the suspicions that, if she didn’t know deep down that he’d had a point when he’d put the blame on her, she’d have struggled up and flayed him with her tongue.

If only she’d locked the door and turned a deaf ear to Jimmy’s weasel pleading that night, two and a half years ago, she’d still be the Tilly of old: confident and bold, with the will and energy to turn her hand to anything to earn a few bob. Prior to that calamity she’d had a personal taste of Jimmy Wild’s brutality, yet she’d opened up to him and once more suffered the devastating consequences.

‘Did you remember to get the bread from Travis’s bakery? You know I only like his loaves.’ Matilda banished miserable memories to prod at a crusty Coburg, testing its freshness.

‘Yeah,’ Alice sighed. ‘Got it from Travis.’ She sat down at the table adjacent to her mother and plonked an elbow down, supporting her chin in a cupped palm. ‘D’you want to go for a walk today to get a bit of exercise? I haven’t got to be back till four o’clock. Josh is doing a late shift at Houndsditch warehouse and is indoors with the kids.’

About to snap she couldn’t be bothered Tilly gazed quietly at the cup between her palms. She knew she should get out instead of mouldering away inside, feeling sorry for herself, day after day. She gave her daughter a quirk of a smile and a jerky nod, accepting the invitation for an outing. Tilly knew she was fortunate to have daughters who put themselves out for her. But displaying her gratitude didn’t come easily, as Reg would have readily testified.

Having made a laborious descent of the rickety stairs, Alice assisting her mother every step of the way, the two women emerged on to Campbell Road into autumn sunlight. As though several neighbours had foreseen Matilda’s rare appearance they immediately converged on her. Beattie Evans abandoned her conversation with a friend and came straight over. Margaret Lovat diverted from her march to Smithie’s shop and headed her way too. Then Connie Whitton caught sight of Matilda, ceased trying to sweet-talk her rent collector into being lenient till next week, and trotted towards the group.

‘Look a mile better’n when I last saw you,’ Beattie announced with a beam.

The trio of neighbours stood eyeing Matilda up and down.

‘Don’t feel it,’ Matilda grumbled.

‘No, you do, honest, Mrs K,’ Connie piped up. ‘Nice day ’n’ all for a bit of a walk about. Where you off to, then?’

‘Might take a stroll around the park,’ Alice answered brightly.

‘Ain’t goin’ that far.’ Matilda was immediately contrary.

‘Yes, you are,’ Alice countered firmly, rolling her eyes in exasperation. ‘You’re out now and going to stay out for a while. Being cooped up in there all day is enough to send anyone bonkers. Anyhow, you know what the doctor’s told you: you got to keep moving about or the stiffness won’t ease off.’

‘Need anything up the shop?’ Margaret Lovat offered. ‘Bring it down for you later if you do, Til.’

Matilda shook her head; she didn’t like relying on her neighbours although she knew their offers of help were genuine. But it was her daughters’ duty to make sure she was all right. ‘Alice just got me some stuff, thanks anyhow.’ It was an abrupt answer.

‘I’d come for a stroll ’n’ all, to keep you company, but I’m gonna have that fat git Podge on me ear’ole in a minute ’cos of the rent.’ Connie scowled over a shoulder.

‘Bleedin’ hell,’ Matilda muttered. ‘That don’t sound too nice, Con ...’

All the women guffawed, even Connie. Beattie gave Tilly’s shoulder an appreciative pat and wiped her eyes. It was good to know that Tilly Keiver still had her sense of humour, despite what she’d been through.

It was well known locally that Connie, currently working as a waitress, was not averse to going on the game when she needed cash. It was also known that she’d let Podge Peters into her room for payment in kind when she was really desperate. And she wasn’t alone in that. Even married women classed as respectable were not beyond opening up to Podge behind their husbands’ backs when things were really grim and they were determined to keep a roof over their kids’ heads. With two million people unemployed there was no realistic chance of earning the money any other way.

The women proceeded up the road together at a slow pace so Tilly wouldn’t feel under pressure to keep up. Beattie drifted away with a wave after a few yards, having seen that her neighbour was impatiently pacing in the hope of resuming where they’d left off gossiping.

‘Oh ... ’ere ’e is again,’ Connie muttered as a fat, florid man emerged from a doorway and stared determinedly at her. She sighed. ‘Better go ’n’ see him or he’ll be round hammering on me door later.’

‘Good luck with that,’ Tilly said drolly as the petite blonde walked off.

‘You heard from your Lucy?’ Margaret Lovat blurted out as the three women ambled on.

‘Not for a week or two,’ Matilda answered. Her eldest daughter, Sophy, was married to Margaret’s eldest son. They’d started at Lockley Grange during the Great War and had been there ever since. Four years ago, when Lucy, Matilda’s youngest, turned fourteen, Sophy had got her a job in service there too. Then Danny had done the same for his brother, Timothy, so the Lovats and the Keivers were closely connected as well as being neighbours. When news came from ‘the kids’ in Essex, whether it came to Margaret or to Tilly, it was usually shared around.

‘You heard anything from them?’ Alice asked, glancing at Margaret.

‘Come on, out with it,’ Matilda duly prompted her neighbour, having noticed the woman looking uncomfortable. Nothing escaped Matilda Keiver; she might be a bit battered about the body but her mind was as sharp as ever. ‘If you’ve got a bit of gossip, let’s hear it, good or bad.’

‘Just ... Tim wrote and said he reckons your Lucy’s getting itchy feet. Said he’s gonna miss her if she goes. Reckon my Tim’s always been a bit sweet on your Lucy.’ Margaret frowned at Tilly. ‘Don’t you say I told you none of this. ‘S’pect Lucy’s gonna speak up in her own time if she’s planning on a move elsewhere.’ Margaret halted as they drew level with a gloomy tenement, similar to the one in which Matilda had rooms. The Lovat family were at least housed closer to what was known as the ‘better’ end of Campbell Road.

‘My Luce is too cute to give up a job as good as that,’ Tilly stated. ‘She got early promotion to lady’s maid a short while ago when her senior left.’

‘Yeah, course,’ Margaret replied, and quickly changed the subject. ‘Seen anything of Reg, Til?’

‘No, and don’t want to neither,’ Tilly growled and, grabbing Alice by the arm, she urged her on.

It was only by leaning heavily on Alice that Tilly made it back up the stairs after their constitutional. By the time they were on the landing and unlocking her door Tilly was breathing heavily and frowning in pain.

‘You’ve got to come and live with me for a while, Mum,’ Alice gently insisted as she helped Tilly to sit down at the table. ‘While Reg is away you’ll never manage on your own. You’ve got to come and live with me and Josh in Wood Green—’

‘Ain’t going nowhere, so you can shut that up,’ Tilly tersely interrupted. ‘Told you lots o’ times, ain’t I, the Bunk’s fer me, cradle to grave?’

‘Well, you’ll be in your grave sooner than you think if you take another tumble down those stairs. And it’s on the cards, ’cos I can’t be here every minute of the day fetching you in stuff.’ Alice inspected the cups in the bowl to see if they’d been washed up and were ready to use. ‘Sooner or later you’re going to want something and try and go out and get it yourself. You know how impatient you can be.’

‘Got Beattie ’n’ Margaret if I’m desperate,’ Tilly returned harshly.

‘Yeah,’ Alice said drily, ‘But you never take up their offers of help, do you?’

‘Haven’t needed to. And I can yell out o’ the winder at people, if needs be. Don’t think I’m relyin’ on you ’n’ Beth to that extent.’ Matilda looked a bit sheepish because she knew that last statement was completely untrue. Bethany lived closer than Alice but had just had her second child, Joey, so wasn’t able to help out as often as Alice. ‘Can get about on me own if it comes to it ... just slowly,’ Matilda mumbled.

‘You’ve got to come to mine for a while,’ Alice insisted, setting the cups on the table in readiness for tea. ‘If you really want to come back to this fleapit when you’re better ...’ She shrugged as she glanced about with distaste at the room in which her mother chose to live. She and her sisters had been brought up in a couple of equally squalid rooms. That tenement house had been near the junction with Seven Sisters Road, at the rougher end of the street. Tilly had moved in the right direction and her home was now situated close to Paddington Street, which sliced Campbell Road into two distinct halves. As far as all the Keiver girls were concerned, Campbell Road, top or bottom, was a slum. Sophy, Alice, Beth and Lucy had promised themselves from an early age to escape the Bunk, as the road was nicknamed due to its proliferation of dosshouses. And they’d all made good on their vows.

‘Ain’t going nowhere,’ Tilly enunciated, planting her palms on the tabletop and leaning towards her daughter. ‘And no time fer tea. You’d best be off home right now if you don’t want Josh to be late getting hisself to work.’

Alice buttoned her coat with a sigh at her mother’s curt dismissal. It was better to leave her to stew in her own juice than end up bickering with her.

‘D’you reckon Lucy might be getting itchy feet?’ During their stroll Alice had avoided discussing the subject. She’d listened to Matilda puffing and panting with the effort of walking along so hadn’t wanted to put any additional pressure on her. Alice had mulled things over in her mind as she’d kicked through autumn leaves in Finsbury Park. And she knew that, quiet as her mother had been beside her, she was also brooding on what Margaret Lovat had told them about Lucy.

‘She’d best not have got herself sacked,’ Matilda replied grumpily. ‘Or she’ll have me to answer to.’

‘Lucy wouldn’t get herself sacked, Mum,’ Alice said with a rueful smile. She liked to think she knew her little sister better than anyone. If Lucy was moving on, Alice reckoned it was because she’d chosen to do so. At present Sophy and Lucy visited only about twice a year and, whereas Alice accepted that Sophy and Danny were now settled elsewhere, she’d harboured a hope that Little Luce, still single and fancy-free, might one day return to London to work so they could see more of one another.

But her youngest sister wouldn’t want to come back to Campbell Road to live. That was certain.

Chapter Two

‘That ain’t what we agreed.’

‘What you talking about ... what we agreed?’

The woman listening outside the door recognised her husband’s mean, scoffing voice.

‘We didn’t agree nuthin’, as I recall.’

‘Reckon you must have a right problem with yer memory then. I told you a monkey, and a monkey it is, or no deal.’

Winifred Finch shrank aside as, through a sliver of space, she saw her husband whip a glance her way. In her eagerness to concentrate on what was going on she’d gripped tightly at the door knob, making it squeak in protest. She crept backwards, still craning her neck in the hope of hearing more.

The two men had frozen at the suspicious sound with their fists planted on the table and their torsos almost touching across its square cloth-covered top. A single lamp was burning to one side of them and it put sallow colour on their snarling profiles, and jagged shadows on the opposite wall.

The younger of the men suddenly sprang half out of his chair and swept the gold on the table towards him with the edges of his palms. Broad, bristle-backed fingers then crouched protectively over the jewellery as he slunk down into his seat. ‘You don’t want this fair and square,’ William Black spat, ‘don’t fucking have it. I got other places to go. This ain’t high street crap, y’know, Finchie. This is stuff most likely come out of Tiffany’s and Mappin & Webb and the like. I’ll have people rip me arm off to get hold of it, so fuck you.’

‘Now ... now ... now ...’ the older man soothed. His slitted eyes darted back to the glitter visible beneath his associate’s hand. He was sure his wife was spying but he’d deal with the nosy cow later. He relaxed back in his chair and spread his arms, gesturing for a truce. ‘Didn’t say I don’t want it, did I, Bill? Just said we ain’t agreed a price yet. Certainly ain’t agreed the sum you come out with.’ He snorted a laugh, hoping he was conveying how farcical he thought Bill’s figure. His mockery sounded false and nervous, and did nothing to alleviate the tension in the gloomy room.

Eddie Finch had known Bill Black for many years. He did business with him on a regular basis despite Bill living Lambeth way and Eddie being an Islington resident. Bill might turn up, unannounced, any evening, and unload from his car several cases stuffed with stolen goodies. Eddie knew Bill made the journey to see him north of the water because he liked the way he did business. If Bill had any better associates over Lambeth way paying good prices Eddie knew he wouldn’t have seen so much of him. He’d no intention of being railroaded into paying over the odds. He slew a crafty glance at the jewellery.

This little stash was entirely different from what he usually got offered. As a rule Bill brought him a few boxes filled with luxury items of leather and linen, knocked off from some top West End store. But this wasn’t fifty quids worth of nice stuff from Derry and Toms or Selfridges, which he’d get a handsome profit on by channelling it through market stalls and clothes dealers. This was serious money. But Eddie wasn’t about to let Bill know how keen he was; neither did he relish getting into a scrap with the nutter.

For one thing, he had his wife and kids about the place, and he didn’t want a tear-up occurring in his own home. For another, Bill was almost half his age and about a stone heavier. He’d seen the damage Bill could inflict when in a paddy. Last week, when in a south London pub for a business meeting with another of his partners in crime, Eddie had seen a fellow who looked a right state courtesy of Bill’s vicious temper. Apparently, he’d spoken less than respectfully to one of Bill’s lady friends. Bill was known to have plenty of women always on the go. In all probability it had been a slag he had no real feelings for that had been insulted yet it had resulted in a bloke nearly getting kicked to death. Eddie could see that Bill hardly had a mark on him so the fellow must have either been too pissed to put up a proper fight or had a lousy punch on him.

Eddie’s excitement at the prospect of getting his hands on some lovely stuff had given him a racing heartbeat and guts that gurgled, but he’d no intention of letting Bill know he was seriously rattled. For a long, long time he’d wanted a plump sum to add to his little nest egg and Eddie reckoned he’d found one. He wasn’t going to let it slip away.

‘Winifred!’ Eddie summoned his wife in a bellow. ‘Take a drink, won’t yer, Bill?’

A diminutive woman with frizzy brown hair and a sullen expression immediately shuffled into the parlour from the adjoining kitchenette. A small boy peered about the edge of the door with huge dark eyes, but when Bill noticed him and gave him an exaggerated wink the child shrank back out of sight.

‘Get us a couple of whiskies while we sort out some business.’

‘Ain’t gonna make no difference to the price.’ Bill Black gave a sour smile. ‘I’ll take a drink with you, Eddie, but I still want a monkey or nothing doing.’ As Winifred beetled back to the kitchenette Bill noticed Eddie’s eyes dart again to his humped hand so he temptingly wriggled his fingers, exposing the shimmer beneath. Weak lamplight caused the diamonds to spark fire and the dark stones appeared huge and profound.

‘Fuckin’ hell, that is nice,’ Eddie whispered, lunging to pick up a ring by its platinum shank. The huge sapphire at its centre appeared black until he angled it towards the light and it burst into colour.

‘Get most o’ yer monkey back on that piece alone, won’t yer?’ Bill softly drawled, watching Eddie with foxy eyes. ‘Tell you the truth, I reckon I must be nuts lettin’ it go.’ He inclined closer to whisper, ‘Betty took a fancy to that sapphire and I nearly had to break her finger to get it back off her, the greedy mare.’ He continued watching Eddie’s expression as he turned the ring this way and that, letting the lamp work its magic.

Eddie fumbled under the edge of the tablecloth to pull open a drawer and find an eyeglass. Having screwed it in, he went to business.

‘Don’t let yer missus get a gander at that one. Go missing, it will, ’fore you’ve had a chance to shift it.’

Eddie snickered and continued twisting the ring to and fro.

Words were unnecessary. Bill knew the weasel sitting opposite would throttle his missus or his kids if any of them so much as touched anything of his without his say so.

Eddie put down the sapphire and began examining a square-cut diamond ring set in yellow gold. He carried on until every single item had been thoroughly studied. He didn’t have much of a clue what to look for; the gems looked big and clean under inspection and that seemed enough. But he’d once had a job as a goldsmith’s apprentice in Hatton Garden and liked to think he knew a bit about the trade despite the fact he’d been sacked for stealing a bracelet before he’d been employed six months.

‘Well?’ Bill prompted, having impatiently observed his companion staring transfixed at the collection of gems neatly arranged in the centre of the table.

‘Give yer four.’

‘Get stuffed.’

Winifred shuffled in and nervously put down two tumblers half-filled with Scotch. She audibly swallowed and gawped, dumbstruck at the jewellery adorning her dirty tablecloth.

‘On yer way,’ her husband gruffly ordered, jerking a thumb in the direction of the kitchenette. Immediately she did as she’d been told, pulling the door to after her.

‘Shut it!’ Eddie barked. He waited until he heard a click, then said, ‘Bleedin’ nosy cow’s probably got her eye stuck to the keyhole instead.’

‘Can’t blame her. All women love jewellery, Eddie. You’ll probably get the shag of yer life if you just let her wear a couple of bits. Betty likes to slip on a few baubles when we’re at it ... says it excites her ...’

‘Give yer four fifty,’ Eddie wheezed out. ‘Can’t say fairer’n that.’

‘Can, Eddie,’ Bill sighed. ‘Can say five hundred and you’re still getting a steal.’ He chuckled at his little joke. He knew he’d got him. Eddie desperately wanted the stuff and he couldn’t blame him. It was the bargain of the century. If Bill had had more time to shift it he’d have gone elsewhere. He knew he could have got closer to a grand if he’d sold the stuff individually. But he wanted shot of it quickly because it was hot and he might at any time get a visit from the boys in blue.

He also needed some money pronto to pay off what he owed on other deals. His spare bedroom at home was stuffed floor to ceiling with fur coats, and the bad girls who’d hoisted the stuff for him were giving him earache about getting their share of the loot. He needed to keep Betty and her crew sweet because they earned him a fortune, and a few of the girls didn’t mind joining him in bed when Betty’s back was turned. Bill glanced at Eddie; he knew he had a wad about the place somewhere. Much as Eddie Finch liked to plead poverty, the miser always had ready cash.

Bill glanced about the parlour with distaste. Considering the dump Eddie lived in it wasn’t surprising he had a stash; he certainly didn’t spend any of his money on his home or his family.

Eddie swiped a hand over his bristly chin. ‘There ain’t gonna be no comeback on this, is there?’

‘Nah! The girl I got working for me, she’s young but real cute. No flies on her. We’ve covered her tracks.’

‘Nothing going to be in the papers, then, to identify it? No list of items up Scotland Yard getting looked at?’

‘Got hoisted off some posh bloke’s tart.’ Bill shrugged. ‘When I say tart, course I mean a right high-class brass. Set up in style, she is, in Mayfair. The old boy, who I can tell you is an MP, ’n’ all – but no more clues,’ he joked playfully – ‘well, he ain’t gonna want it splashed all over the papers that his mistress’s jewellery got robbed when it’s probably a damn sight better than anything he’s ever bought fer his missus, is he?’

‘Who is this girl you use? Is it Betty?’ Eddie was playing for time while he thought things through. He doubted that Bill would have used Betty Pickering to steal this lot. For one thing, she was the woman in his harem he fancied the most and he wouldn’t risk getting her banged up on a long stretch for something serious. Betty already had a police record for shoplifting and had done short sentences. Her face was well known; she wouldn’t easily get a job in service, even with false references.

‘My business, that is, Eddie.’ Bill tapped his nose. ‘Can’t expect me to go telling you me trade secrets. Don’t you worry, she’s a pro all right. Weren’t there working as a maid for this tart more’n a week.’ He made a diving motion with a hand. ‘Straight in, she were, had a mosey around, found where the jewellery box were hid and Bob’s yer uncle.’ He abruptly drew the gems into his fingers, his expression grim. ‘Time’s up. Ready or not?’

‘What you doin’ downstairs, Jenny?’ Eddie had scrambled to his feet at the sight of one of his teenage daughters stationed in the doorway. ‘I told you to stay in yer room, you disobedient little ... Winnie!’ he roared, summoning his wife.

Winifred shot out and gawped at Jennifer. ‘You know yer dad don’t like you downstairs when he’s got company,’ she wailed. Her bony hands began flapping in front of her pinafore to shoo the girl away.

‘Only after a drink of water,’ Jennifer breathed in a high nervous voice, but she couldn’t stop her gleaming eyes from sliding towards Bill Black.

‘Leave her be; ain’t doin’ no harm.’ Bill sent the girl a subtle smile. He knew Eddie and Winnie had twin daughters who were about fourteen. This was the little minx who gave him come-on looks; the prettier one, called Katherine, seemed a right stuck-up cow. Considering who she was and where she lived she’d no right to such airs and graces, in Bill’s opinion. He’d seen Jennifer before, watching him out of an upstairs window when he’d been unloading stuff from the boot of his car. He knew her sort – had a throb in her fanny before her tits were big enough to be of interest. Bill was wise enough to decline gaol bait but he wasn’t averse to stringing her along and letting her know he’d be ready when she was ...

‘Fetch her a bleedin’ cup of water and get rid of her,’ Eddie growled through set teeth at his wife. He’d seen Jennifer stare at the pile of gems before her eyes skittered away. Once Bill was gone the little slut would feel the back of his hand.

A moment later, Winnie thrust a chipped cup at her daughter, slopping some water down the front of Jennifer’s nightdress in her haste to get rid of her.

Once Winnie had taken herself off back into the kitchenette and the stairs creaked quietly, Bill said, amused, ‘Now ... where was we, Finchie? You want this stuff or not, ’cos I’m on a promise and I don’t want Betty to go off the boil, if yer know wot I mean ...’

‘All right,’ Eddie muttered in defeat. ‘Give yer half now and half on Friday.’ He pulled out of his pocket a thick roll of notes and, having slowly counted out, slapped most of it down on the tablecloth. ‘Look ... just left meself a tenner to get by.’

Bill laughed at his sulky expression as he picked up the cash. ‘You know that ain’t how it works, mate.’

‘Fucking hell,’ Eddie snapped, slamming himself back in the chair. ‘Yer reckon I’ve got five hundred notes about the place?’

‘Tell you what.’ Bill tilted his head, eyeing him shrewdly. ‘I’ll take yer two ’n’ ’alf and leave you them.’ He pushed some rings towards Eddie. ‘Then Friday I’ll come by with the sapphire and you can settle up.’ He waved the ring beneath Eddie’s nose before pocketing it.

Eddie jerked immediately to his feet. He reckoned come Friday Bill would have sold it elsewhere. ‘You don’t trust me to pay up?’ He was all huffy indignation.

‘Course I don’t, mate.’ Bill also got to his feet. ‘What kind o’ mug d’you take me for?’ He picked up the whisky and downed it in one swallow. ‘Say thanks to the missus fer the drink, won’t you now, just in case she can’t hear me.’ A sardonic glance was sent towards the kitchenette.

‘No ... hang on ...’ Eddie stopped him by the door that led into the gloomy passage. He swiped a hand over his jaw. ‘I’ll see what I can rake up.’ He went into the kitchen and closed the door quickly behind him. Raised voices could be heard, then a shove from her husband sent Winifred, holding her son by the hand, hurtling out of the small room. The momentum was too much for the boy’s balance and he fell to his knees, but Winnie immediately hoisted him up by an arm before flouncing out of the parlour. A moment later the stairs started creaking again.

Bill chuckled to himself as he heard Eddie turn the key in the lock. Wherever it was Eddie had hidden his money in the kitchen he wasn’t about to let him, or his wife, know about it. ‘Wise move, mate,’ Bill called drily. ‘Can’t be too careful. Winnie finds yer stash you won’t see her nor it no more.’

Garbled muttering was heard coming from behind the door, then a few moments later Eddie was back with a roll of notes. ‘There, take the fuckin’ lot. You’ve cleaned me out.’ He threw the money on the table.

‘Know what I reckon, Eddie?’ Bill grinned as he collected fivers and tenners. ‘I reckon I should’ve asked fer more because you could pull a grand out of this place if necessary, couldn’t yer?’ He shook his head. ‘Crafty old git.’ He retrieved the ring from his pocket. ‘There, have that, and a good leg-over later, if you let Winifred slip it on. She’ll be staring at that instead of the ceiling for a change, and fantasising you’re Ramon Navarro and she’s Tallulah Bankhead.’ Ignoring Eddie’s scowl he went out guffawing, one hand curved about the cash in his pocket.

Even before he’d heard the front door click shut behind Bill, Eddie was drawing his belt from his trousers. He was seething to have been forced to pay so much for the jewellery. He wasn’t happy either that he’d been forced to scrape together his nest egg in front of his wife; he now needed to find a new hidy-hole. Winifred would have the kitchen upside down looking for it as soon as his back was turned. But there was nothing left to find. Bill had cleaned him out, and Eddie never liked to be without a little bit tucked away. He sent a vicious look ceiling-ward, his lips flat against his teeth as he started towards the door.

Chapter Three

‘Why didn’t you let me know you was coming?’

‘Wanted it to be a nice surprise for you.’ Lucy managed to shield her shocked expression against Matilda’s shoulder whilst giving her a fierce hug. Once she’d composed herself she looked up.

Lucy had last seen her mother many months ago during the Easter holiday and had thought then she looked rough. In the meantime, as the hot summer months had passed by, she’d prayed the fine weather would help Matilda recuperate in body and mind, rather than the heatwave exhaust her, for she’d seemed worryingly depressed even before Reg took off. But moments ago, Lucy’s optimism had dwindled. While waiting on the landing to be let in, she’d realised her mother was finding the simple task of opening the door an irritating effort.

Having lugged her trunk and a bag of shopping up the rickety flight of stairs to the first floor, Lucy’s light, teasing ratatat had drawn slow shuffling footsteps and muttered cursing from inside the room. Her first glimpse of haggard features, grey with strain, had been viewed through a narrow aperture and had made Lucy’s spirits plummet. Having identified her visitor Matilda had then found the energy to shove the door wide open and hoarsely whoop in delight. But despite her mother’s enthusiastic welcome Lucy was dismayed by her relapse.

Alice had sent a letter to Essex over a month ago to let her and Sophy know that Reg had done a runner. A long time had passed with no news of him, she’d added, so it seemed unlikely he’d soon be back. Alice had also informed them that their mother was still struggling to get about on her own and was stubbornly refusing to accept neighbours’ help, or to move to Wood Green so Alice could properly care for her.

‘How long you got off work?’ Tilly asked, gripping tightly at Lucy’s hands and pushing her back so she could study her lovely face. ‘Be a treat if you could stay till the weekend.’ Matilda’s customary gruff tone bubbled joyfully at the prospect of having her youngest daughter’s company.

‘I can stay, Mum,’ Lucy confirmed, a smile in her voice. ‘In fact I’ll be able to stay for a while ’cos I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘Good or bad?’ Tilly immediately elbowed free of her daughter’s renewed embrace and took a suspicious peer at her flat belly.

‘Well, I think you’ll reckon it’s good. I’ve come back to London to stay.’

‘To stay?’ Matilda parroted. ‘It’s true then what Margaret said.’ She frowned at Lucy. ‘You after a change of scenery or you got sacked?’ It was barked out indignantly rather than angrily. Of all her daughters, Lucy tended to be proud and impetuous. As a child she’d got into numerous scraps with other kids because of it. Not that Matilda had chided her for that. When you lived in the Bunk you brought up your kids to give as good as they got or they’d have the life bullied out of them. But her youngest could be a bit naïve at times as well as hot-headed. Matilda felt annoyed with herself for not pursuing the matter of Lucy’s employment when Margaret Lovat had first hinted at it, weeks ago.

‘Not got sacked, Mum!’ Lucy chuckled. ‘Got an interview for a job in Bloomsbury.’ She struck a hoity-toity little pose.

Tilly’s lined face softened in relief. ‘In town, eh?’ She nodded to show she was impressed. ‘More money, then?’ she asked, ever prosaic.

‘Hope so; ’cos of my age and lack of experience and so on it’ll all be discussed at the interview. It says so in the letter they’ve sent me. But if it’s a few shillings less I’m not bothered. I’ll be closer to you, anyhow. So even though I’ll be living in I can come ’n’ see you on all of me free afternoons,’ Lucy rattled off. ‘And I’ll be able to meet up with Alice and Beth. I’ll take you out places and we can have some fine times again. It’ll be like before I went away when it was just us two.’

After her other sisters had left to set up their own homes, Tilly’s maternal instinct, no longer diluted by being channelled four ways, had condensed and targeted Lucy. They had grown very close, and her sisters still referred to Lucy as their mother’s blue-eyed girl. The bond had survived Tilly’s volatile nature and heavy drinking, and Lucy leaving home to work in service.

‘And what if you don’t get offered this job, my gel? Bound to be lots of women applyin’ fer a position like that.’

Lucy shrugged insouciantly. ‘I’ll find another agency and go after another job. But I want to have a taste of London life, and I ain’t going back to the sticks and that’s final.’ She gave a crisp nod, setting her thick chestnut hair waving. ‘Not that I could go back anyhow ’cos I told that snooty bitch that married Mr Lockley just what I thought of her before I carried me case out of the back door.’

Matilda grinned despite herself. She liked to know that her daughters didn’t stand for any nonsense, and she recalled that Sophy had described the new mistress as ‘bleedin’ hard work’. ‘Well, you’ll have to get this job then, and once you’ve got it, you keep hold of it.’ Despite being overjoyed to hear her Little Luce was going to be close by, Tilly wagged a cautioning finger at her. ‘Good work’s hard to come by these days. You was lucky getting a job straight from school. And you got yer sister Sophy to thank fer that. You’ve never had it hard, so take it from me, being skint ain’t fun.’

‘Not renting the back room now you’re on yer own?’ Lucy had opened the connecting door and peered in to a dismal space that held nothing but an iron bed with a stained mattress on it, and a wonky tallboy that had a gaping hole right in the centre where the largest drawer should have been. She gazed enquiringly at her mother. Most people who lived in the Bunk and had a bit of spare space would rent it out. Lucy could recall that even when their rooms had been filled to overflowing with family members, Tilly would sometimes take in a temporary lodger for a bit of extra cash. Being the youngest, she’d usually share a bed with her mother and free up just enough space in the back room for another young woman to kip down with Bethany and Alice in the back. It was so unlike her mother to overlook such an opportunity that Lucy repeated her question.

Matilda shook her head. ‘Could do with the rent money all right but can’t be doing with the company.’

‘You can do with the company,’ Lucy disagreed, closing the back room door and approaching her mother. ‘Alice reckons you could do with a hand most days. If you had a lodger ... perhaps a widow or a spinster about your own age who could help out with other things ...’

‘Don’t want no strangers nursemaiding me,’ Tilly brusquely asserted. ‘So don’t think you lot are landing one on me. What else yer sisters been telling you about me behind me back?’

‘It’s not like that, Mum,’ Lucy said briskly. ‘We’re all worried about you, you know. Why won’t you go and live with Alice for a while till you’re feeling better?’

‘Has Alice told you to get on at me about it? If she has I’ll have her hide fer pokin’ her nose in where it’s not wanted.’

‘Alice hasn’t said more’n she’s worried you’ll take another bad fall and end up looking a worse state than you do now.’

‘Look a mess, do I?’ Tilly challenged with grim amusement.

‘I’ve seen you look better. In fact you looked better at Easter,’ Lucy immediately came back with an honest reply. ‘I expected you to be well on the mend by now.’

Matilda ignored that, instead demanding, ‘And I suppose you’ve all been having a chinwag about Reg ’n’ all. What’ve you all been saying about him?’

‘He’s done a runner and left you on yer own.’ It was a concise reply.

‘That’s about the size of it,’ Matilda agreed. ‘Ain’t talking about him neither. He’s gone and forgotten, and that’s that.’ A moment later she’d rescinded that vow. ‘You don’t seem surprised about him going.’

Lucy shrugged. ‘Last time I was here I could tell things weren’t right between you. You were both snapping and snarling more than usual.’

‘He’s gone back to Ireland.’

‘Back to Ireland?’ Lucy echoed, her eyes widening in surprise. None of her sisters had heard that bit of news as far as she was aware. ‘What, for good?’

‘Dunno,’ Matilda replied. ‘Yesterday I went up to Smithie’s shop.’ She sent her daughter a sour smile. ‘See, I can do the trip on me own, if I have to. Anyhow, I bumped into Reg’s friend Vince. He looked a bit embarrassed; don’t know why ’cos I never had a habit of questioning him about Reg. So, he just come out with it and said Reg had caught the boat back a few weeks previous.’

Lucy had met Vince a few times and thought him a weasely sort of fellow. ‘Perhaps he was just saying that, Mum, ’cos he felt awkward and wanted to nip off.’

‘Just said I never pestered him over Reg. Don’t matter anyway; let him stay in Ireland, for all I care. Seen him in his true colours now, ain’t I?’ Matilda pursed her lips. ‘Bleedin’ good job, weren’t it, we never did the “in sickness and in health” bit,’ she added bitterly.

Despite Matilda’s bravado Lucy could tell her mother was getting upset talking about the man who’d abandoned her. She and her sisters, along with most of Campbell Road’s inhabitants, were aware that Reg ought to have been at home with their mother on the night their evil uncle had turned up with murderous intentions. Nobody really blamed Reg for allowing himself to be waylaid by a pal for a drink in a pub; but then nobody blamed Tilly either for being unrelentingly resentful that he had.

That horrible night had been a catalogue of calamity for their family. On the very same night, their cousin, Robert Wild, Jimmy’s son, had been beaten up so badly by thugs that he’d nearly died. The disasters had been like toppling dominoes: one setting the other in motion. A shiver rippled through Lucy at the memory of the dreadful months that had followed when they’d feared Matilda and Robert might both die of their injuries.

Determinedly, Lucy cheered herself up and, to impress on her mum that she was definitely not returning to Essex, she briskly dragged her case in from the landing. She left the trunk against the wall but plonked the shopping bag down on the table. ‘Here,brought us in a nice couple of currant buns so let’s get that kettle on.’

‘Those from Travis’s?’ Tilly grumpily interrogated. ‘You know I only like stuff from the Travis bakery.’

‘Yeah, Mum,’ Lucy mocked in a dreary tone that transformed in to a chuckle. Like her sisters, she was used to Tilly’s deliberately contrary ways. ‘They are from old man Travis. The dirty old git don’t change, do he? Still stares straight at me chest when he serves me.’

Tilly opened the paper bag and her eyes lit up as a spicy scent wafted to her nostrils. It was a treat for her to have something fresh and tasty. To save herself the ordeal of a trip out, or the need to ask a neighbour for a favour, she ate little and made what she had last.

Lucy picked up the kettle and gave it a shake to see if there was enough water in it for a pot of tea. She pulled out a chair for her mother to sink into, for she’d noticed Tilly had been holding on to the table edge to ease the weight off her legs. ‘Sit yourself down again, Mum, and I’ll make a brew. Have you got any jam to put in these buns?’

Ten minutes later the tea was made and the buns split and spread with marge as Tilly hadn’t got any jam.

‘So when’s your interview?’ Tilly took a large bite out of the warm, aromatic bun. Any currants that escaped were picked from her plate and popped in her mouth.

‘Ten o’clock on Friday, Bloomsbury.’ Lucy brushed crumbs from her lips with her fingertips. ‘A Mrs Venner is the housekeeper and a Mrs Boyd is me senior. I’ll be seeing them both in Mrs Venner’s office. It’s a posh establishment, by the sound of things; belongs to a Lord and Lady Mortimer in Bedford Square.’ She raised her eyebrows, displaying pride at the prospect of working for the aristocracy. ‘Don’t suppose I’ll get to see much of them. The housekeeper and the lady’s maid’ll be me guvnors.’

Tilly nodded sagely. ‘You turn up all nice and tidy with manners to match then, my gel, and the job’ll be yours.’

Lucy grinned and delved into a pocket. She pulled out an envelope. ‘Should be mine, no trouble; if not, I’ll have Mrs Lovat’s hide.’ She playfully waved the envelope under her mother’s nose. ‘The housekeeper at me last job’s done me a lovely reference, don’t you know ...’

Winnie Finch thrust her son’s coat at him. ‘Get that on and get yourself off or you’ll be late for school, Tom.’

The boy grimaced as he gingerly stuck an arm in a sleeve. ‘Can I stay home today, Mum?’

‘No, you can’t. I’ve got me job to do, you know that.’ Winifred avoided Tom’s pleading eyes.

‘Can I stop home with Jenny?’

‘No, you can’t; she’s off out to find herself work.’ Winnie knew her son was still suffering from getting a belt off his father earlier in the week. Not that Eddie had intended to discipline Tom when he pounded up the stairs that night, face contorted in rage. Tom was his favourite and he rarely laid a finger on him.

Jennifer, the brazen little cow, had been his target because she’d defied him and poked her nose in while Eddie had been doing a deal with Bill Black. Winnie knew her husband hated any of them to see or hear what was going on when his associates called round. If Eddie could, he’d arrange it so Bill always turned up at an appointed time, rather than whenever he felt like dropping by with a box of stuff or, as he had this time, a pocketful of gemstone rings.

Winnie was aware too that the fact one of his daughters was turning into a little tart before she’d been out of school six months was less worrying to Eddie than knowing Jennifer had seen the jewellery. Jenny’s jaw had sagged open in the way Winnie imagined her own had done when she’d spotted those sparklers on the table. What she desperately wanted to know – and had tried hard to discover – was whether the lovely stuff was still in the house. Since that evening, Winnie had been through the kitchen with a fine-tooth comb and turned up nothing at all. She’d even accidentally dislodged a cupboard from the wall in her search and had made a very inexpert job of screwing it back in place. If the gems were in the house, and Winnie could find them, or Eddie’s stash of banknotes, she’d take herself and Tom off as fast as she could. The twins were old enough now to sort themselves out, in Winnie’s opinion.

Katherine was a good, hardworking girl – she’d been doing her little job serving in the kiosk at the local flicks the evening Bill Black turned up – and Winnie would feel a twinge at leaving her behind. But Katherine had a good brain on her and Winnie was confident she would eventually get a nice full-time position in a factory. Katherine talked constantly of training to be a nurse and Winnie reckoned she had the right attitude to see it through. As for Jenny, Winnie feared if she didn’t change her ways, she’d be hanging around on street corners touting for business from the likes of Bill Black. But, brazen as she’d been that night, Jenny hadn’t deserved the beating Eddie had given her. Her daughter’s legs were still black and blue, despite the fact that the blankets she’d dived under had given her some protection from her father’s fury. If Katherine had been home she’d also have got a taste of Eddie’s brutality because she always stood up to him if he set about her sister.

Jennifer’s howls had brought her brother running in from his bedroom and, though just six years old, Tom had jumped on his father’s back to try to protect her, and got a bash for his trouble.

Winnie helped Tom on with his coat, uncomfortably aware her impatience to get him out of the house was making him wince. It had been her job to stop Eddie’s rampage that night, not her son’s. Jennifer had deserved chastisement. Besides, whenever her husband was in one of those moods, Winnie always paid later ... in bed, and on that particular evening she hadn’t seen why she should have to put up with the bastard setting about her twice.

‘There’s an advertisement for an assistant in the Dobson’s shop window,’ Winnie barked at Jennifer, who was descending the stairs, hunched into her dressing gown for warmth against the draught coming through the open front door.

‘I’m going down the labour exchange with me friend later this morning ...’

‘Yer friend can go on her own. You go along to the sweet shop straight away and apply for the job.’

‘I don’t want to work in a poxy sweet shop. I’m gonna get a job in Oxford Street, in Selfridges ... or somewhere like that.’

‘You won’t be getting no jobs in the West End, miss,’ Winnie hissed at Jennifer. ‘You can give over with your fancy ideas and act a bit more like yer sister. Katherine’s had a job since the day after she finished her schooling. Time you got off yer backside. Now get yourself dressed and get along to Dobson’s and don’t come back without a job or it’ll be the worse for you.’

Chapter Four

‘Like it here, do you?’

‘Like having me here, do you?’ Lucy returned, equally sarcastic. She knew who’d spoken without taking a look so she finished leisurely positioning Lady Mortimer’s combs on the dressing table before turning to confront the woman behind her.

Lucy had just about had her fill of Audrey Stubbs spying on her. Since she’d started work at Mortimer House at the beginning of the week, whether she’d been brushing clothes or refilling scent bottles and cosmetic pots, the housemaid had seemed to materialise at the corner of her eye. Audrey could have been hovering on the threshold of her ladyship’s bedroom for some time before Lucy realised she was again being stalked.

‘Don’t make a blind bit of difference to me if you’re here or there,’ Audrey answered airily, lazily polishing the brass door knob with her pinafore.

‘Could’ve sworn it did,’ Lucy retorted. ‘’Cos ever since I started on Monday you’ve been on me back about something.’ She glanced past Audrey to check nobody was nearby to overhear. ‘What’s got your goat?’ Lucy demanded sharply. ‘I taken a job you was after?’ She’d stabbed a guess at the reason for Audrey’s animosity and seemed to have turned up trumps. The maid’s lips tightened and the malice in her eyes was concealed behind her eyelashes.

‘Let’s face it, if you’d been up to the work you’d’ve got it ’cos you was here first,’ Lucy pointed out with vague amusement. ‘Must be a reason why you was overlooked.’ She went back to the dressing table and picked up a delicate comb. She leisurely turned it this way and that. ‘P’raps Mrs Boyd ain’t any keener on you than I am.’

‘Think yer clever, don’t you? Coming here ’n’ swanking around, ’cos you managed to land a plum job. I’ve seen you eyeing up the men, don’t think I ain’t.’ Audrey had approached stealthily to jab twice at Lucy’s arm to gain her attention.

‘What?’ Lucy glanced over a shoulder, her features crumpled in incomprehension. She’d been used to getting attention from male colleagues when she’d worked at Lockley Grange. But there, or here, she’d never yet met one who’d interested her enough to make her stare back. Since she was a little girl she’d been told she was pretty. But all the Keiver women were lookers in their own way so she had never felt the need to boast about it.

‘If Mrs Boyd gets a sniff of how you’ve been carryin’ on with Rory Jackson, you’ll be out on yer ear, and serve you right.’

Lucy itched to slap the smirk off Audrey’s face but was puzzled by what the housemaid had just implied. ‘Carrying on with Rory?’ she echoed, frowning.

Rory was one of two chauffeurs who ferried about Lord and Lady Mortimer and their children. Apart from a bit of bantering at breakfast time earlier in the week, when they’d sat next to each other in the servants’ dining hall, she’d had little to do with Rory. They’d passed on the back stairs earlier that day, he descending and she travelling speedily in the opposite direction as she’d been told to fetch her ladyship’s favourite kid boots to be soled and heeled. The lad appointed to run to the cobblers had been impatiently waiting by the kitchen door for her return so she hadn’t dawdled, and had exchanged with Rory just a good morning. The most she could bring to mind about him was that he’d got fair hair, a pleasing face, and looked smart in his chauffeur’s uniform. Suddenly the penny dropped and she realised Audrey probably had a crush on him. Lucy raised her eyes heavenward in an effort to persuade her colleague there was no reason for her to be jealous on that score.

‘If you’ve got yer sights set on Rory Jackson, you can have him with my compliments.’

‘Not good enough for you, is that it? Proper full of yourself, ain’t you, Miss Keiver?’

Lucy huffed in disbelief. ‘What’s up with you? Look, I’m telling you you’re welcome to him. From what I’ve seen so far there ain’t one fellow here I’d walk out with, let alone pine over.’ Her tone was all mock sympathy. ‘Now, why don’t you sling yer ’ook so I can get on ’n’ do what I’m supposed to be doing ’stead of listening to your stupid prattle.’

‘I’ve met your type before.’ Audrey grabbed Lucy’s arm and jerked her around. ‘Butter wouldn’t melt one minute, then the next you’re round the back o’ the washhouse with yer drawers round yer ankles.’

‘Let go of me arm.’

‘Why, what you gonna do ... make me?’

As Audrey’s spittle flecked her face Lucy instinctively shoved a hand hard against her shoulder. Audrey tottered backwards with a grunt of surprise and ended on her posterior on the polished floor just as her ladyship’s maid walked in.

‘What the devil is going on here?’ Mrs Boyd barked, her round, bespectacled face a study of shock and disgust.

‘Lucy Keiver just pushed me over, Mrs Boyd.’ Audrey had immediately turned on the waterworks and was dabbing at her face with the pinafore she’d whipped up. She scrambled on to her knees and continued whimpering, presenting a picture of hurt innocence.

Determined to keep the disturbance, which had vexingly occurred on her patch, undetected until she’d had some facts, Mrs Boyd immediately hurried to shut all connecting doors. ‘Explain yourself, Lucy Keiver,’ she hissed.

‘I didn’t want this to happen,’ Lucy began. ‘I was just setting out her ladyship’s brushes and combs like you asked me to when Audrey come up behind and started accusing me of stupid stuff.’ She moistened her lips. She didn’t want to tell tales; at the Grange the servants had had an unspoken pact that, barring gross misconduct, they never grassed one another up. But Audrey hadn’t hesitated in immediately putting the blame on her. Lucy had not even finished one full week in her new job. She’d been growing to like it here too, despite having been put in the same dormitory as Audrey Stubbs. All she’d done was try to get the stupid cow to back off and leave her alone. It was her own fault she’d ended up on her backside, snivelling.

‘Accusing you of what?’ Mrs Boyd snapped, inclining stiffly forward. ‘Come on, out with it.’

‘She thinks I’m flirting with the men. She thinks I’m after Rory Jackson and I only met him Monday and haven’t said more’n half a dozen words to him.’

‘I reckon you’ve done more’n that with him,’ Audrey sniped, and narrowed her gaze on Mrs Boyd to gauge the woman’s reaction.

‘Enough!’ Clare Boyd had heard about Audrey being involved in a scuffle over a different male employee. Allegedly, she’d been found outside, smoking and flirting with one of the gardeners and a tussle had ensued in the kitchen with another girl. It had been Mrs Venner’s responsibility to sort that one out but apparently she’d let it pass because there’d been no witnesses to the fight and neither girl had made a complaint.

Mrs Boyd felt relieved that she’d had no hand in taking on Audrey. The housekeeper had been solely responsible for her recruitment. But Clare had been present when Mrs Venner interviewed Lucy Keiver and she had sanctioned her employment. Lucy had seemed to have an honest forthright manner – and an excellent reference from her previous employer – and Clare had believed she’d make a good addition to the household. She sighed to herself. In the old days, before the war, you could get decent staff, but these youngsters coming through were no good at all. They had no interest in anything but dancing, smoking and flirting with the opposite sex.

‘Don’t think it’s gone unnoticed by me that you have no business being here in Lady Mortimer’s chamber,’ Mrs Boyd snapped at Audrey. ‘The upstairs cleaning was all finished hours ago. And I believe it’s not two weeks since you were reprimanded for shirking outside instead of working.’ She looked from one downcast face to the other. ‘I’ll speak to Mrs Venner later and you can each explain to her your disgraceful conduct. Now get about your duties.’

As Lucy proceeded along the corridor she was aware of many pairs of eyes following her and a hush descending where moments before had been heard lively chatter. She pursed her lips and inched up her chin. Of course, the other servants had been gossiping over the brouhaha upstairs concerning her and Audrey Stubbs, and the likely punishments they would receive.

At the Grange, if Lucy had been given a ticking-off for some misdemeanour – and she’d certainly had some from her sister and brother-in-law – she’d have got sympathetic smiles from her colleagues. Not here. Cold glances and turned shoulders met her lonely progress towards the kitchens. Once she’d passed by she heard a few sniggers and her fingers curled at her sides.

She’d just had her dressing-down from Mrs Venner and had been told her punishment was the loss of her afternoon off next week. It had come as a bitter blow because she’d planned on persuading her mother to take a trip round to her sister Beth’s house. But she hadn’t felt it prudent to argue or even offer to have her pay docked instead. She’d simply bitten her lip and waited to be dismissed by the housekeeper.

She was the newest member of staff and had not yet made any friends amongst her colleagues. Prue Bates, who was the other girl sharing the dormitory in which she and Audrey slept, had been standoffish from the start and had marked her territory very clearly in the cramped attic room. Lucy considered most of them quite snooty for hired help. But it didn’t worry her; she liked her work, learning to care for her ladyship and her daughters’ swish clothes and accessories. She’d also fetched bits and pieces from the haberdashers and milliners. Lucy didn’t mind at all being an errand girl for it got her out of the house for a while. After the sedate pace of life at Lockley Grange the crowds and the bustle in London fascinated her. She’d walk along looking about and jumping out of her skin when hooting vehicles chugged past. Mostly the fellows were just impatient to get going in traffic but she’d noticed a delivery driver had done it to get her attention and give her a saucy signal.

So far she’d had little contact with the mistress or her two young daughters. Mrs Boyd kept her in the background as much as possible and took all the praise for jobs well done. But Lucy knew there was time enough to make her mark; she was being trained to be the Mortimer girls’ personal maid when they were older.

On the whole she’d found Mrs Boyd a fair boss and wasn’t resentful about being disciplined. But Lucy felt dejected that camaraderie, so much in evidence at the Grange when the mistress had been alive, seemed to be lacking here. Rory Jackson seemed friendly but his harmless attention to her had got her into trouble. Reflecting on him seemed to have conjured him up. Her sideways glance through the open door of the servants’ hall landed on his lean figure. He saw her too and strolled up to her.

‘You didn’t hang about in getting yourself into trouble, did you?’

Lucy kept on walking without replying to his amused statement. He followed her as she carried on towards the kitchens.

‘What started it off?’

‘As if you didn’t know,’ Lucy muttered.

‘What you on about? Why would I know anything?’

Lucy halted and planted her hands on her hips. ‘Don’t tell me it ain’t gone round like wildfire. No doubt Audrey’s got her side in first. As I’m the new girl I’m the culprit, right?’

‘Touchy, ain’t you? Carry on like that and everybody will think you’re at fault.’

‘They can think what they bloody well like!’ Lucy gritted out through set teeth. ‘I know what went on, and that’s enough for me.’

‘It’s enough for me too. You say it’s her fault, I believe you.’

‘Why’s that, then?’ Lucy started off again at a slower pace, slanting him a look.

‘Ain’t the first time Audrey’s got caught out. Don’t suppose it’ll be the last. Only next time she’ll get the boot. Everybody’s allowed a few warnings here at Mortimer House, and she’s had hers.’

Lucy recalled that Mrs Boyd had snapped at Audrey because she’d recently been in trouble.

‘What started it off?’ he again asked.

As it concerned him, and was a bit embarrassing, Lucy considered telling Rory to mind his own business, but instead she blurted out the truth. ‘Audrey thinks I’ve got me eye on you and she don’t like it. If you and her have a thing, you’ve got my sympathy, ’cos she’s a right nasty cow, as far as I can see.’ She eyed him frostily. ‘On the other hand, if you’ve been winding her up on purpose, saying I’m after you, when I ain’t, then the two of you deserve each other, ’cos you’re no better than she is.’ Lucy made to walk quickly on but Rory grabbed her elbow and tugged her back.

‘I don’t know her much better’n I know you. As I said, she’s only been here a short while. Neither of you takes my fancy ... no offence.’

‘None taken ... and likewise,’ Lucy rattled off. But she felt miffed by his clipped words and amused air, and ripped her elbow free of his grip.

Rory followed a few paces behind her marching figure. ‘Is that all you were fighting about? Audrey thinking we’d been flirting?’ he asked lightly.

‘We didn’t fight over you so don’t go getting conceited ideas. If anything, I reckon she’s more narked she didn’t get my job.’

‘She did want it. Everybody knew that. That’s why you shouldn’t be surprised that a lot of people aren’t jumping to any conclusions over what happened today.’

Lucy turned and gazed up at his lean profile.

‘Where was you when she started on you?’

‘In the mistress’s bedroom.’ Lucy took the last few steps to the kitchen and stopped outside the door. She was going to ask for a sandwich and eat it in her room rather than sit with her colleagues glaring at her at teatime.

‘Ain’t the first time she’s been caught dawdling in a place she shouldn’t be. She’s workshy, that one.’ Rory plunged his hands into his pockets.

‘She had a set-to with anybody else?’

He nodded. ‘Couple of times since she’s been here. Millie ...’ He saw Lucy’s frown and explained, ‘Housemaid who comes in twice a week, you’ve probably not yet met her ... she gave Audrey a smack when she found out she’d been canoodling with her sweetheart. Jack helps out in the garden and, officially, him and Audrey were just sharing a crafty smoke, nothing more to it.’

‘And unofficially?’ Lucy suggested drily.

‘Jack couldn’t help boasting to a few of us men that he’d been on the verge of getting a roll in the hay.’ He chuckled softly. ‘Right puffed up, he were, the little tyke, ’cos he reckoned Audrey wouldn’t take no for an answer.’

Lucy blushed, feeling indignant that the brazen trollop had had the cheek to accuse her of being the sort to drop her drawers out in the open! ‘Who else has she been in trouble with?’ Lucy’s question tumbled out.

‘Susan Reeves; your predecessor came across Audrey in her ladyship’s room just after she’d laid out some of her clothes for a fancy evening do. By all accounts she gave Audrey a right piece of her mind.’ Rory propped an elbow against the wall, casually supporting a cheek on an open palm. ‘Audrey had only been here a few days and got away with saying she was confused and didn’t know it was the personal maids’ job to bring up the mistress’s clean linen.’

Lucy gave a little nod to let him know she’d appreciate knowing more.

‘Susan reckoned that Audrey was overawed seeing all her ladyship’s finery,’ Rory resumed. ‘When she disturbed Audrey she’d got one of Lady Mortimer’s frocks held up against her and was staring at herself in the glass.’ He shrugged. ‘Susan just packed her off with a flea in her ear. She never told Mrs Venner or Mrs Boyd about it. No harm had been done and as Susan had already put in her notice and was leaving at the end of the week to get wed it wasn’t worth making a fuss.’

‘Susan confided all this in you, did she?’ Lucy asked waspishly.

Rory grinned. ‘Nah ... her fiancé, Gus Miller, did. He’s a friend of mine. Don’t suppose I’ll see much of old Dusty now he’s leg-shackled and gone off to Essex.’

‘That’s where I’ve just come from,’ Lucy offered up automatically. ‘Big manor house with a farm and acres and acres of land, close to the coast.’

‘Yeah? Whereabouts?’

‘Southend way.’

‘Know Southend.’ Rory nodded in emphasis. ‘No good for you there?’

Lucy shrugged. ‘It were a lot better a while back before Mr Lockley’s first wife died and he got remarried to a right dragon.’ Lucy snapped her lips together. She barely knew Rory and regretted being indiscreet. You never could tell who might know who. ‘Found it a bit dull there so I’ve come back to London to be closer to me mum,’ she added briskly. ‘She’s not been at all well.’ Lucy changed the subject as she sensed Rory to be on the point of questioning her about her family. ‘So, Audrey Stubbs is gonna be one for me to watch, by all accounts.’

Rory twisted about to lean back against the corridor wall so they were face to face and he could study her properly.

‘She’ll hold a grudge against me.’ Lucy grimaced. ‘Not bothered, though. If I find her fiddling about with her ladyship’s belongings I’ll wring her neck.’

‘I reckon you would too.’

He was smiling and Lucy noticed he had nice even white teeth and grey eyes with long lashes. ‘Perhaps you should tell her and put her out of her misery,’ Lucy said abruptly.

‘Tell her?’ he echoed, mystified.

‘You said you don’t fancy her ... perhaps you should tell her and no doubt she’ll turn her attention back to Jack in the garden.’

‘Pity him if she does,’ Rory said, his eyes warm and humorous.

‘Pity her if she does, ’cos from what you’ve said, Millie won’t take kindly to it and might lay her out next time.’

Rory chuckled appreciatively, his gaze becoming intimate, making Lucy’s cheeks sting with heat. ‘Just getting something for me tea,’ she blurted. ‘Ain’t sitting in there with ’em all staring at me, thinking I’ve done wrong when I’ve not. I’ll end up telling somebody their fortune then I’ll lose another of me afternoons off ... or it might even be me job next time.’

‘Lost yer afternoon off?’

‘Made arrangements to take me mum out, too.’

‘Where does your mum live? Far is it?’

Lucy stabbed a look at him and nibbled her lower lip. From the age of about eight years old, when she’d first done a bit of doorstep scrubbing for coppers at weekends, she’d had it drummed into her by her mum and older sisters that you never disclosed to an employer – or for that matter any stranger – that you were out of the Bunk. Campbell Road had a notorious reputation as being the worst street in north London and those who lived there were discriminated against as being the dregs of society. She certainly didn’t know Rory Jackson well enough to confide in him anything as important as where she’d been reared, and where, despite it all, she still considered her real home to be.

‘She lives in north London; not that far.’ It was a brusque reply and Lucy made to open the kitchen door to go to find her tea.

‘Big place, north London. Hampstead way, is she?’ Rory stabbed a guess.

Lucy snorted a laugh. ‘Bit too rich for us.’ She could see he was keen to know so she said airily, ‘Finsbury Park way, if you must know.’ Before he could probe further she’d pushed open the door.

‘You don’t want to hide yourself away.’ Rory put a hand out to bar her way into the kitchen. ‘If you chicken out teatime there’ll be some who’ll think you’re feeling guilty. Turn up, sit down and eat your grub.’ He grinned down at her. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll talk to you if nobody else will.’

‘Yeah, thanks a lot.’ It was drily said but Lucy couldn’t prevent a small smile curving her mouth. ‘That’s how I got in trouble in the first place, Rory Jackson, you talking to me, and making Audrey jealous.’

‘Told you,I ain’t taken no notice of her, and I’ve given her no reason to think I ever will.’ He tilted his face to watch Lucy’s evasive expression. ‘I don’t tell lies.’

‘That right? Why you being so nice to me then? Anybody’d think you fancied me. Yet you’ve just said you don’t.’

A look of mock thoughtfulness put a furrow in his brow but he appeared unabashed by her accusation. ‘All right, I’ll own up. Once in a while I tell a little fib.’ He sauntered off towards the butler’s office. ‘Got to see Mr Collins about some pay I’m due. See you in the dining hall later. Keep your chin up.’

Chapter Five

‘I’ve had enough, I tell you! I won’t never have a chance to get near her ladyship’s jewels now this new girl’s got taken on. Fucking Lucy Keiver is watching me like an ’awk.’ Ada Stone flung herself back against brickwork and took a long drag on a cigarette while staring sulkily into the night. ‘Shame Susan quit. She were a pushover, that one. But it ain’t easy now slipping in and out of the bedrooms.’

Ada was stationed in an alleyway beneath the weak flicker of a gas lamp. A few feet away a tall, muscular man was silhouetted against the same wall. A fashionable homburg was pushed back on his head and he was dressed in a loose-fitting check suit. The dusk hid the fact that the cloth was garish, if of fine quality. Next to him, Ada appeared like a small dark drab in her voluminous servant’s cape.

It was close to one o’clock in the morning and Ada had slipped out of Mortimer House just over an hour ago to meet Bill Black on the sly. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it. She knew that there were only so many times she could use a pretence of having raging bellyache and desperately needing the outside privy, rather than settling for the little po under the bed, before her bunk mates started getting suspicious. She wouldn’t put it past Keiver to follow her, the inquisitive bitch.

But Ada Stone – or Audrey Stubbs, as her colleagues and employers at Mortimer House knew her – no longer cared about getting sacked. In fact she’d been tempted to be purposely insolent just so the prissy housekeeper might finally lose patience with her. The only reason she hadn’t was because she feared the full force of this man’s wrath if she got booted out of Mortimer House before she’d got him what he wanted. She longed to be away from the drudgery of working in service and back to excitement and easy pickings: hoisting expensive clothes around the West End with her light-fingered friends.

Ada was twenty and had been sent to work in service in Kent at the age of fourteen. But she’d got bored and left after a year, travelling here and there taking on jobs in shops or laundries. On returning to south London, she had been introduced to Bill by her brother, who ran a market stall. She’d jumped at the chance of working for him, and had been recruited to his gang despite her age. That suited Bill Black. He could always find a use for a fresh face unknown to store detectives and the local coppers and magistrates. And Ada had proved her worth from the off.

Bill was prepared to turn his hand to any form of criminal activity. He came from the same area of Elephant and Castle as Ada Stone and her family and was five years older than she was. Her brother Derek was a seasoned member of his team and was presently doing six months’ hard labour following a heist that had gone sour. The driver of the lorry he and his accomplices had hijacked had done a very silly thing. Instead of playing dead after a crack on the head he’d fought back and got stabbed for his pains. Derek hadn’t wielded the blade but it was more than his life was worth to say who had, so he’d been resigned to doing time along with the culprit while the unlucky hero recovered in hospital.

‘I’m handing in me notice, Bill, so don’t go trying to persuade me otherwise.’ Ada flicked ash with jittery fingers, avoiding his inscrutable gaze. ‘It’s been a bleedin’ waste of time ’n’ I told you it would be from the start. But you wouldn’t listen to me, would yer?’

A tense minute passed in silence and Ada realised Bill had no intention of answering her. ‘Nearly a soddin’ month I been stuck in that house and what we got? Nuthin’.’ Again she turned to him for a response but he kept staring ahead and smoking. She knew he was ignoring her on purpose, as a punishment, because he didn’t like what he was hearing.

‘Tell you what, I’ll lift a few bits of silver to make it worthwhile, eh, Bill?’ Ada hissed a reconciliatory offer into the dark. ‘Old Collins, the butler, ain’t doing the inventory till the end of the month. He won’t even notice it’s missing till then and I could be long gone ...’ She tailed off, squinting through the gloom at Bill’s immobile profile.

Finally, she sighed, realising he was not going to be swayed by any of her suggestions. ‘Should never have gone in the poxy place,’ she said peevishly. ‘Could’ve made a good few quid fer meself by now round the West End instead of being stuck workin’ me fingers to the bone as a bleedin’ skivvy.’

His withdrawal was beginning to unnerve her. She dragged desperately on her cigarette while pacing to and fro. Tears of frustration started prickling her eyes; she’d be going back; he’d make her. He wouldn’t let her give up until he’d got what he wanted. She might be there till Christmas before the safe was opened and out came the jewellery box for her to rummage in. Ada reckoned she could handle Mrs Boyd, no trouble. It wouldn’t occur to that stuffy old cow that a little nobody would dare rob her precious employers.

Ada had overheard Venner and Boyd talking about her just that afternoon. They’d called her flighty, and thought she might encourage too many followers – as they named the housemaids’ boyfriends. Ada had stuffed a fist to her mouth to stifle her raucous guffaw on hearing that. She’d not wanted to give the game away that she was eavesdropping on them. Ada liked the boys right enough, a lot more than those two dried-up old biddies could ever imagine, but that wasn’t the half of it. If they only knew what she was really about they’d both have a blue fit!

Keiver was a different kettle of fish. Ada had immediately got her measure, just as Lucy Keiver had recognised her sort straight away. Ever since their tussle they’d been circling each other, waiting for the inevitable to happen. And it would; and despite Ada believing she was a bit of a rough handful, she wasn’t completely confident she’d come off best in a bust-up with the under-lady’s maid.

‘Listen, Bill, I’m gonna get sacked soon anyhow if I don’t jack it in.’ Ada sounded coarse and angry. ‘I’m just about riled up enough to give someone a thump.’ She dropped her cigarette butt to the ground, stamped on it, and immediately put out a hand for another.

Bill fished a packet of Weights out of his pocket and having lit one he took it from his lips and gave it to her.

‘Come on now ...’ He finally broke his silence and soothed her with a touch of his manicured fingers on her mousy hair. ‘Don’t go gettin’ all het up. You did just dandy in that other place, didn’t you?’ His hand continued stroking. ‘Got the stuff out sweet as a nut and nobody knew who you was and no comebacks, ’cos you acted like a real pro, didn’t you, Annie Smith.’ Playfully he chucked her under the chin as he used Ada’s previous alias. ‘This time, Miss Audrey Stubbs, you’re gonna be even better at doing me a good job—’

‘That other time were different,’ Ada interrupted. But she preened beneath his praise and his touch. ‘That silly tart was always out of her mind on drugs ’n’ booze. Could’ve walked out of that gaff with a fuckin’ crystal chandelier under me arm and she wouldn’t have noticed.’

Bill chuckled. ‘P’raps you should try a different angle.’ He cocked his head and looked down at her. ‘How about you pretend you want to be this new gel’s pal? Instead of goin’ at it hammer ’n’ tongs, Ada, you could be a bit subtle. Then this Lucy might think you’re hangin’ around her ladyship’s bedroom to be friends with her instead of clocking when the jewellery box gets an airing.’

‘She ain’t that stupid! She knows I hate her and she don’t like me neither. She’s too cute by half.’

‘Well, you’re gonna have to be that bit cuter then, ain’t you, Ada?’ Bill returned with sinister softness.

Ada darted a narrowed glance at him. She knew he could switch from friend to enemy in seconds. She’d been caressed and clumped by him in her time, and from bitter experience knew that sometimes just seconds separated the two.

Although they’d only been talking for fifteen minutes or so Ada knew he was already impatient to be gone back to the gin palace on the corner. She, on the other hand, would stay with him all night, given half a chance. She needed to get out of that house, not just because she was bored rigid, missing her shoplifting jaunts and the luxuries they brought in, but because she was a woman with basic needs. And neither of those needs was being met in Mortimer House. Every night she was desperate for a stiff drink, and a horny man.

‘Got a flask with you, Bill?’ she asked.

Bill produced a pewter bottle from a pocket and courteously unscrewed the top for her. After she’d taken a long swig he helped himself before the flask disappeared whence it came.

‘Let’s have another,’ Ada complained immediately, having noticed the whisky disappear.

‘Don’t want to go back stinkin’ of booze, do you, gel? Give the game away, that will. I reckon it’s time you was on yer way. It’s getting late.’ He made a show of checking his wristwatch beneath the milky lamplight.

Ada huffed sulkily, eyeing his crotch from beneath lowered lashes. ‘Got anything else for me before I go?’ she whispered crudely. She felt no humiliation in having to ask for what she wanted.

She knew that if Betty Pickering, one of her girl gang comrades, hadn’t last week been taken into custody on a charge of shoplifting sables from Selfridges, Bill would doubtless have been with her tonight. Ada was resigned to being second best while Betty was available. But at present Ada had Bill more or less to herself. If Betty got a stretch inside – and Ada privately hoped she would – then Bill might start treating her as his number-one girl. Of course, Ada knew he had different little scrubbers he saw on and off but they didn’t bother her; neither had they seemed to bother Betty too much. Bill was a big attractive hunk of a man who always seemed to have plenty of cash to flash around because he was a successful criminal with a crafty streak. So far, he’d avoided imprisonment, unlike many of the Elephant and Castle boys, by managing to implicate others and fabricate watertight alibis.

‘Come on, get goin’, Ada.’ Bill sounded harsh and impatient, apparently deaf to her suggestiveness. ‘Ain’t took all the trouble to get yer set up with false references to come out wi’ nuthin’ ’cos you’ve blown yer cover.’

‘Don’t have ter come out with nuthin’. I can get us some silver, like I said, and—’

‘I’ve told you that silver ain’t what I’m after,’ Bill snarled. ‘I’m after first prize, not consolation prize.’ He made an effort to calm down and smiled at her. ‘I can get any of Betty’s crew to lift me some nice shiny silver out of Gamages. But none o’ the others has got the class to fetch me out a special bit of jewellery. That’s your speciality, sweet’eart.’

He prowled away a few steps, his dark head down so she had no glimpse of his expression and had no idea what he was thinking. A moment later he’d whipped back in front of her. ‘It’s emeralds me client’s after, see. He’s a rich gent, upper crust, and his little ladybird’s got a yen for a big green stone, and she’s seen the one she wants round her ladyship’s neck. Giving him gyp, she is, over having it. Now I’m getting gyp off him ’cos I’ve said I’ve got a sure way of nabbing it for him. Boasted to him I’ve got the best hoister in the whole of London on to it. Now you don’t want to make me look like I’m a chancer, Ada, do you? Can’t have that, can I?’ Bill tilted his face close to hers.

‘What if her ladyship ain’t got that big green stone in her box in the safe? If it’s good as that it might be held in the bank vault. I heard Mrs Boyd saying some of her heirlooms are kept there.’

‘According to my source she had it on recently so I reckon it’s still at the house. Any case, we ain’t gonna know, are we, ’less you get to work and take a gander.’

‘I dunno ...’ Ada whined.

‘Never mind dunno,’ Bill growled. ‘You just get the bleedin’ necklace and we’ll be in the money.’ He stuffed his hands impatiently in his pockets. He regretted having said so much. Ada was his workhorse, not his partner or confidante. This was a delicate situation and involved people in high places. He would have thought twice before disclosing to Betty what was going on. He put his lips against Ada’s cheek, taking her pointed chin in a stinging grip that made her squirm. ‘You goin’ against me?’

Ada carefully shook her head.

‘Good gel. Course you ain’t. I know you could bring a fuckin’ crystal chandelier out that house with you if you really put yer mind to it, Ada.’ Suddenly he laughed and swooped his lips to hers. He kissed her hard on the mouth, grabbing a breast through the cloth of her heavy cloak.

Immediately Ada dropped her newly lit cigarette to the ground and wound her arms about his shoulders, plunging her tongue greedily into his open mouth. Her pelvis ground against his groin, and a hand began frantically stroking his erection beneath wool.

Bill laughed, mingling their alcoholic breath before lifting his head. ‘You’re a right dirty gel, know that, Ada?’ His words were coarse, with no hint of affection. But Bill didn’t really believe Ada expected any wooing, neither did he care if she did. She might once have had an ambition to be a proper girlfriend to him, but he reckoned by now she’d got the message that Betty was his favourite.

But Ada was passably attractive and had a reasonable figure on her so no red-blooded fellow was going to turn down what she willingly offered, even if he knew it might have been given elsewhere ten minutes previously. It was no secret in their neighbourhood that Ada Stone behaved like a regular nymphomaniac.

‘Begging fer a seeing-to right here, are you, Ada?’ Bill goaded her, squeezing harder at her nipple. He waited for her to nod, as she always did, before barking contemptuously, ‘Get yer drawers off then, dirty gel.’

Ada nipped Bill’s lower lip with teasing teeth as a little thank you. ‘’S’another reason I got to get out o’ that bleedin’ house, Bill,’ she moaned breathlessly, whilst kicking away her underwear and drawing up her nightdress beneath her cloak. She fell back against brickwork, getting into position for him to hoist her up against the wall as he had on other occasions when they’d met on her afternoon off and he’d needed to coax her to obedience. ‘Need yer, don’t I, Bill? Want this all the time. Been ages since we done it ...’

‘Been a week,’ he grunted, lifting her and shoving her back then up and down till he’d managed brutally to impale her.

The rough treatment didn’t worry Ada; she had a constant itch between her legs and any man’s attention to it was encouraged and gratefully received.

Bill Black heard her sigh of utter relief, felt her impatient bucking, and he chuckled. ‘Don’t tell me there’s not a bloke in a house as big that can’t keep you going till yer day off.’

‘I reckon they’re all bleedin’ eunuchs in that place,’ she gasped, bouncing against him, clawing at his back. ‘All too scared of their shadows to act like real men. Nobody there like you, Bill ... wish there was,’ she moaned. ‘Might stay for ever then ...’ Her panted words tailed away into a guttural mewing sound.

‘How about one o’ them starched-up women then, if yer real desperate?’ Bill whispered, then realised he liked the idea of that and the fantasy prompted him to drive into her with such force that she started to shriek and gyrate.

Bill clapped his hand over her mouth and took a startled look about. ‘Fuckin’ shut up, will yer?’ he growled. ‘You’ll bring a crowd down on us.’

Ada felt exhausted and hungry on returning to the house; Bill hadn’t even offered to walk back with her so she’d flitted through the dark, deserted streets as fast as she could, her cloak wrapped tight about her. Being a criminal herself she knew a lone woman out at night was easy pickings and she hadn’t fancied a crack on the head from a mugger.

Having gratefully reached her destination she slipped in through the side door and tiptoed along the corridor towards the kitchens, hoping there might be a few easily found titbits lying around. Though she doubted anybody would be about at two o’clock in the morning, nevertheless she took pains to proceed quietly. As she was passing Mrs Venner’s office she heard a sound and started to attention. She frowned in disbelief; she’d believed even that conscientious old biddy would have taken to her bed by now. Ada froze against the wall her heart thumping loudly in her ears. She knew if somebody senior caught her up and about at this hour, with a reek of alcohol and tobacco about her, awkward questions would be asked. It was obvious from the way she was dressed that she’d been out, and she’d just faithfully promised Bill that she’d get the necklace, not the sack ...

Having strained to listen, and caught low whispering coming from behind the door, Ada’s curiosity overcame her caution and she noiselessly turned the handle. It was locked, but on glancing down she saw a faint light leaking from beneath it. A whimpering little sigh was heard next and it increased her suspicions. She crouched to put her eye to the keyhole. A few moments later she’d stuffed a muffling fist to her mouth and had tumbled backwards onto her posterior in scandalised shock. Her jaw sagged towards her chest, then she silently scrambled up, her features now set in a soundless laugh. She scratched against the door with a fingernail then flattened herself against the wall. She was aware of the quiet within, then a moment later she heard the key turn in the lock and knew one of them would come out to investigate. Before the door was properly open Ada had burst in to confront the two women.

Felicity Venner recovered composure first. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing, Stubbs? How dare you burst in like this? Why aren’t you in your dormitory? What have you been doing?’ she breathlessly demanded.

‘Not quite what you’ve been doing with Mrs Boyd, that’s fer sure,’ Ada whispered, her face alight with lewd amusement. She backed against the door until it clicked quietly shut while putting a warning finger to her mouth. ‘My preference is for boys. But I’ll admit I’ve been enjoying meself tonight, like you two. My “follower” I reckon you’d call Bill. Big lusty chap, he is, but course you wouldn’t be interested in knowing about any o’ that ...’

By the light of the small oil lamp it could be seen that Clare Boyd’s face was crimson, and where she’d hastily done up her bodice most of the little pearl buttons were in the wrong hooks. At forty-two, she was only three years younger than her lover but she could have passed for her junior by a decade. Her skin was smoother and her character less robust at times of need. She darted a glance at Felicity Venner, moistening her lips, pleading with the older woman to keep up the bluster and find a plausible way to extricate them both from this awful mess.

‘Don’t bother denying what you’ve been up to,’ Ada muttered, intercepting Clare’s frantic look. ‘I seen you at it through the keyhole, and if I give a yell and bring ’em all running you’re gonna have some explaining to do, ain’t you?’ She nodded at Clare’s flushed face. ‘Now what would she be doing here at this time o’ night, and with her blouse all skewwhiff?’ She glanced at Felicity, then at the floor. ‘Them your drawers or hers?’ she asked, having spotted the discarded linen. Before the housekeeper could retrieve her undergarments Ada stamped a foot on them, and drew them out of reach. ‘Never mind ... ain’t the end of the world, you know, getting caught out like this, ’cos I’ve had an idea ...’

Still in a half-doze, Lucy heard Audrey return from her jaunt but didn’t bother rolling over to confront her roommate about her absence. She’d guessed what Audrey had been getting up to when she went off at night, and sleepily wondered if Jack from the garden had after all succumbed to having a roll in the hay. When a moment later Audrey’s mattress creaked and Lucy heard a ribald giggle being smothered by bedcovers she knew that whoever Audrey had been with, he’d shown her a good time.

Chapter Six

‘I’m being sacked?’

‘No, not sacked, Miss Keiver,’ Mrs Boyd hastily interrupted. ‘There will be a vacancy for you here, as a housemaid, should you wish to accept it.’

‘But why ... but ...?’

‘Enough! A decision has been made and it is not up for discussion.’ Clare Boyd shot a glance at the housekeeper. But it seemed on this occasion no assistance was to be forthcoming from that quarter. Mrs Venner was tight-lipped, staring straight ahead, taking no part in Lucy Keiver’s dismissal. Clare knew that she was effectively dismissing her junior despite having made an offer of alternative work. Lucy was a proud and intelligent young woman who knew she’d given them no reason to treat her shabbily, and rather than be demoted she would pack her bags.

The trio of women were closeted in the housekeeper’s office. The two senior members of staff were ranged behind a large oak desk; Lucy was seated opposite on a hard-backed chair, her face a study of furious bewilderment.

‘What’ve I done wrong?’ Lucy abruptly stood up with a savage shrug. ‘I’ve not moaned or been insubordinate. I’ve done everything you’ve asked and made a good job of it too. I know I have.’

‘You were told that you would be on a trial period when you started work here,’ Mrs Venner finally said.

‘I know, and I’ve made sure to do me best, so there’d be no complaints about me. Has anybody complained?’ she demanded, frowning.

‘They have not,’ Mrs Venner replied stiltedly. ‘But her ladyship knows that Mrs Boyd and I both feel you are not suited to the particular work. Lady Mortimer is in agreement that a position elsewhere should now be offered to you—’

‘I don’t want a position elsewhere!’ Lucy interrupted indignantly.

‘In that case, Miss Keiver, we accept your resignation, and in the circumstances, as you feel so strongly, you will not be obliged to work out your notice period. You may go today.’ Felicity Venner had been a little unnerved by the forceful arguments issuing from Lucy Keiver. She had imagined the girl might cause a scene by bursting into tears, or pleading for a second chance. But Lucy looked more likely to leap into battle than collapse, snivelling. A significant glance at her partner in crime enquired if Clare had anything further to add before they might speedily end the interview.

Mrs Boyd cleared her throat, shuffling some paperwork together on the desk in front of her. ‘It seems there’s nothing more to say on the subject. I’m sorry—’

‘So you bloomin’ well should be sorry!’ Lucy gritted through her teeth and stormed towards the door.

‘A reference will be prepared for you ... and your wages ...’

‘I’ll take me pay but you know what you can do with your reference, and if you don’t, I’ll tell you quick enough—’ Lucy suddenly swallowed the rest of her impulsive insolence.

Her shock and anger had made her oblivious to some of what had been said, but important bits were drifting back into her mind. ‘A vacancy for a housemaid’s come up, has it?’ It was a vital question. ‘So who is it took me job so you can give me theirs?’ She stepped back into the room swinging a narrowed glance between the two stiff-backed, middle-aged women. As the lady’s maid blinked rapidly behind her glasses Lucy grunted a laugh. ‘Well ... well ... I wonder how Audrey Stubbs managed to swing that one,’ she drawled acidly. ‘You know as well as I do that the ding-dong me and Audrey had a while ago, upstairs in her ladyship’s bedroom, was her fault not mine.’ She watched with sour satisfaction as Clare Boyd shifted uncomfortably on her seat. ‘But you’ve gone ahead and got rid of me so you can give her me job. Something fishy’s going on, and I don’t reckon Lord and Lady Mortimer knows the first thing about it.’ She gave a crisp nod. ‘Audrey Stubbs is a wrong’un, and take it from me, you’ve made a bad mistake giving in to her. You’re gonna regret what you’ve done.’

When the sound of the slamming door had died away Clare continued to avoid Felicity’s eyes but muttered bitterly, ‘How right she is about that.’

She knew she’d been a fool to allow herself to be seduced by the housekeeper because, once started, and conducted unnoticed, it was an affair that, for her, survived indifference and was easier to carry on than bring to an end.

When Clare had arrived in London five years ago she’d felt lonely and in need of comfort, having recently been widowed. She’d nursed Bernard at home until he’d died of his war injuries and had found the task mentally and physically gruelling. Before the conflict they had both been in domestic service and had married when barely nineteen. But those few youthful years with an active virile man seemed to Clare just a hazy memory. She would have liked to find another fellow to love, but she’d never been a sought-after beauty, even in her prime. A shortage of men following the carnage of the Great War had left widows and spinsters alike yearning in vain for husbands.

When Mrs Venner had seemed to single her out as a companion Clare had gratefully lapped up her support and friendship, thinking it was just in the woman’s nature to be kind. Now she knew her better and understood that it hadn’t merely been a friend the housekeeper had been after. Although Felicity Venner styled herself ‘Mrs’, Clare had since learned she had never been married. And the reason for that was obvious to Clare, even if her noble employers deemed it a ruse for respectability rather than a smokescreen.

Following four years spent as colleagues and lovers, a scheming minx had discovered the shameful truth about them and was using it as a tool for blackmail. Clare knew that Lucy Keiver wasn’t going to be the only person to suffer for Audrey Stubbs’s wickedness.

‘Once Miss Keiver has left and Stubbs has taken up her position as my apprentice, I shall find an excuse to tender my notice.’ Clare abruptly got to her feet.

‘There is no need to do anything so drastic ...’ Felicity gasped, shooting upright.

‘Of course there is!’ Clare struggled to keep her voice low. ‘Stubbs will never stop mocking us, and we will never be rid of the rotten girl now she knows she has us pinned beneath her thumb. Do you really think I will have her working alongside me, tormenting me with every sly look and word?’

Felicity came over to Clare, attempting to put a comforting arm about her but was immediately shrugged off.

‘I’m bitterly ashamed, and worried, and you should be too,’ Clare said bleakly before quitting the room.

‘What’s given you such a sour puss?’ Aren’t you pleased to see me on yer afternoon off?’ Tilly beamed at her youngest daughter.

Lucy had wordlessly sunk down into a battered chair by the table when she’d arrived seconds ago. Instead of the happy chatter Matilda usually received in greeting the moment her daughter turned up on a visit, Lucy had planted her elbows on the table and shielded her dejection with her hands. Realising the door had been left ajar, Matilda limped over, muttering, to shut it and kick the sausage of rags into place at its base. It was unusual for Lucy to be careless on a blustery November day. Keeping everything closed against the cold was standard practice for people used to living in the Bunk. But as she put a hand on the door knob Matilda stood stock-still, having noticed the packing case on the landing, leaning against the wall.

‘What’s gone on?’ Matilda gasped, swinging about to confront Lucy.

‘Chucked it in,’ Lucy admitted through muffling fingers.

‘You done what?’ Matilda roared. ‘Christmas nearly here and you’ve chucked in a good job?’ She hobbled over to Lucy as fast as her aches and pains would allow, and ripped her daughter’s hands away from her cheeks so she could read her expression. ‘What you been up to? You pulled a stroke and got found out?’

‘I ain’t done anything ... apart from shoot off me mouth when I should’ve kept quiet. But somebody’s pulled a stroke all right, and I’ve suffered for it,’ Lucy added bitterly.

Matilda could hear the tears in her youngest daughter’s voice and some of her anger withered. Having dislodged a chair from under the table she collapsed into it. ‘Had the dirty done on yer?’ she asked, astonished. ‘How? Who done it?’

‘I’ve lost me job, Mum,’ Lucy mumbled. ‘I liked it too. And I was good at it.’ She gazed at her mother through misty vision. ‘I’ve not done anything wrong, swear, but the housekeeper and me senior told me me job’s gone to somebody else. They said I could have a housemaid’s job instead but ...’ She threw back her head in despair and blinked at the cobweb-covered ceiling.

‘But you told ’em to poke it,’ Matilda guessed, her lined face still displaying her shock.

Lucy abruptly stood up. ‘I wasn’t thinking straight, I was in such a paddy. But I know now I should’ve bit me tongue and played it clever. If I’d stuck around till after Christmas we’d have had more money to help us over the holiday, and I might’ve found out what’s been going on in that place. I know fer definite that something has. A nasty cow’s got given me job and I want to know why.’

Matilda gawped at her daughter. She knew this blow couldn’t have come at a worse time of the year, and jobs were getting harder than ever to find. The papers were always full of the woes of unemployment and the length of the labour exchange queues. Although she didn’t get out and about very much, Matilda was keen to listen to her neighbours’ news about the locals who were unsuccessfully looking for jobs. But she understood why Lucy had reacted in the way she had. All the Keiver clan – men and women – had hot tempers and fast tongues, and were likely to explode if they believed they’d fallen foul of underhand trickery.

‘Didn’t clump anyone, did you?’ Matilda sounded rueful.

Lucy gave a gruff laugh on realising her mother was slowly calming down, having digested her bad news. ‘I felt like it, Mum. That’s why I got meself out of there quick as I could. Just packed me bags, got me pay, and got out.’ The mention of her wages prompted her to pull from her pocket the little envelope that held a small amount of cash.

‘Gave you a reference, though, didn’t they?’

Lucy slid guilty eyes to her mother’s face, inwardly wincing as she saw Matilda’s optimistic expression crumble.

‘You never told ’em to poke that too!’ Matilda burst out. ‘Heavens above, Luce!’ She thumped a fist on the cracked wooden table top. ‘How you gonna get another job in service without a character?’

Lucy shot to her mother and enclosed her in an apologetic hug that was so fierce it made Matilda totter on her feet. ‘I’ll find something, swear I will,’ Lucy promised. ‘I’ll be employed again before Christmas, you’ll see.’

‘Got another afternoon off, Lucy? You’re doing all right!’ Connie Whitton had called out on noticing Matilda’s daughter emerging from Smithie’s shop with a small bag of groceries in her hand. She was surprised to see her because Lucy had been about in the street earlier in the week and Connie thought she’d not be back yet.

Lucy gave a welcoming smile as she noticed Connie crossing the road to speak to her. Despite the fact the woman was more than a decade older than she was, Lucy had always liked her. She knew Connie was a bit of ‘a goer’, as her mother would call the tarts she had time for. Those Matilda didn’t like were called something else entirely. But Connie had an appealingly mischievous way about her that didn’t put up the backs of other women in the way some brash local prostitutes did.

In her time Connie had had some proper swanky sugar daddies looking after her. She was a good-looking blonde in her early thirties, who’d got engaged twice but never married. At present, she was fancy-free, working shifts as a waitress in a West End supper club. But it was well known she’d supplement her earnings by going on the game when tips were scarce, and she didn’t care who knew about it. Despite some of her neighbours being hostile to her because of her part-time profession she could be indiscriminately kind-hearted. If a family were in deep trouble, she’d give those particular kids coins for sweets in the full knowledge that they’d run home and hand them over to their mums. Some of those women would have shoved the money back at Connie if she’d given it to them directly. But so long as it filled empty bellies in a roundabout way, it was acceptable.

When Connie had been in her prime Lucy had been about six or seven and she could remember being struck by how beautifully glamorous the young woman looked wearing her fur coats and red lipstick. Lucy had been one of the street urchins treated to pennies and thrupenny bits when Connie was feeling flush. But only seconds after receiving her treasure her mother would materialise at her side and remove it from her fingers before she could hide it away.

‘Not at work today?’ Connie had stopped by her side, folding her arms in readiness for a chat.

‘Been out searching for work this morning,’ Lucy told her, pulling a long face. ‘I’ve just come back to have a bite to eat with Mum. Then I’ll be off out again hoping to spot a job posted in a shop window. It’s too busy up the labour exchange to hang around waiting. Couldn’t even get in the door it was so crowded. I’d sooner pound pavements and save time. Know of any vacancies going, Con?’

‘Thought you was settled in a good job.’

‘Long story ...’ Lucy replied in a tone of voice that deterred further questions.

‘Ever done any waitressing?’ Connie resisted the temptation to be nosy.

Lucy nodded. ‘Course. Used to help out serving at table when I worked with me sister Sophy in Essex. We all used to pitch in together doing different jobs when we needed to.’ She smiled. ‘Actually, I’ve just been and asked for a job in Ken’s caff, and the Lyons Corner House, but nothing doing.’

‘Fancy a job working in the supper club with me?’ Connie asked brightly. ‘A girl’s leaving at the end of the week. She’s got a better offer ... off one of the gents who’s a regular client.’ She chuckled as she saw Lucy’s dubious frown. ‘Oh, you don’t have to get involved in any of that if you don’t want to. Most of the girls are above board and just serve and smile and take their tips home.’ Connie had comically mimed waitress duties as she was speaking, making Lucy laugh, especially when she acted out shoving cash into her brassiere.

‘The Cuckoo Club is in Piccadilly. There’s a bit of gambling now and again, and late drinking, and a jazz band playing most nights. Mainly we get gentlemen come in on their own, but some bring their lady friends,’ Connie explained. ‘If you get pestered by randy fellows, I’ll see ’em off for you, Luce.’

‘Oh, come on, Con,’ Lucy drawled with a smile. ‘D’you want me mum to wring me neck before I’m much older?’

‘Don’t have to tell her you’re working with me. Just say you’ve got a job as a waitress in a restaurant. Ain’t a lie. Honest, there’s plenty of us gels prepared to do a bit extra, if he looks nice and the price is right, so you won’t need to worry.’

‘Ain’t interested, Con. Seriously ... have you seen any jobs posted about?’

‘Dobson’s sweet shop in Blackstock Road had a card in the window. Don’t know if it’s still there, though, ’cos I saw it last week.’

‘I’ll go straight away and find out,’ Lucy said quickly. ‘Do us a favour, Con, would you, and drop this bit of shopping into Mum? Tell her where I’m off to and that I shouldn’t be long.’ Lucy thrust the shopping bag in Connie’s direction and hurried off.

‘What’s happened then?’ Connie skipped after Lucy, to catch her up. Her curiosity had got the better of her. She wanted to know why Lucy was unemployed when earlier in the week Matilda had been boasting just how well Lucy was doing working for the aristocracy. ‘Did you chuck in your job? Matilda said you liked it.’

‘Tell you later,’ Lucy called, jogging away.

It was the best bit of news she’d had all morning. She’d traipsed for miles and had spotted only two cards advertising for assistants. Neither the tobacconist nor the cobbler had thought her suitable for their vacancies and had told her so. Inwardly she cursed that she’d not gone directly to Blackstock Road earlier but had headed off in the opposite direction. The most interesting notice she’d seen all day was a newsstand placard declaring, lord mayor’s show: over 30 injured as elephants stampede.

‘Thanks, Connie,’ Lucy threw over a shoulder, followed by a breathless, ‘Wish me luck.’

When Lucy rushed up, puffing, to scan the sweet shop window her heart plummeted. There was nothing advertised behind the glass but the shop’s wares. She took a glance past bottles and jars filled with colourful candies and saw Mrs Dobson. She appeared to be alone inside so Lucy decided it might be worth asking, just in case the card had fallen on the floor, and lain there unnoticed.

The bell on the door announced her and she received a sour look from the shopkeeper. Lucy had always thought Mr and Mrs Dobson a pair of miserable gits. When young and saucy and still at school she’d once told him to suck what he sold ’cos it might sweeten him up a bit.

‘Good afternoon to you, Mrs Dobson. Heard you wanted an assistant,’ Lucy started politely. ‘I’d like to apply for the job.’

‘It’s taken,’ Mrs Dobson returned flatly, then glanced up again and levelled an interested look at Lucy.

She’d hired Jennifer Finch last week but was beginning to regret it even though she was paying her a low rate because of her age. The girl had showed no aptitude for the work. She stood daydreaming at quiet times rather than stirring herself to tidy up or refill bottles and jars. Jennifer had gone off on her dinner break yesterday and returned ten minutes late. Mrs Dobson glanced at the clock on the wall. She was late again today; it was twenty-five minutes to two and she had been due back at half-past one.

‘I’m giving somebody a short trial to see if they suit. You can come back tomorrow, if you like, and I’ll let you know if I’m satisfied with her.’ Mrs Dobson knew when Jennifer eventually returned she’d tell her she could keep her coat on and go back home.

Mrs Dobson was aware that Lucy Keiver came from a rough family in the Bunk, but some of that clan had done all right for themselves and were known to be hard workers. Besides, she looked to be at least eighteen, whereas Jennifer was virtually a school leaver and acted as though she needed to return to the classroom and pay attention this time.

But Mrs Dobson knew her husband would disapprove of Lucy Keiver; he had always been prejudiced against people from the Bunk, lumping them all together as liars and thieves. Mrs Dobson, however, was prepared to speak as she found and so far she’d nothing against Lucy. Besides, as her husband left it to her to earn them both a living running the shop during the week, while he swanned off to council meetings and sat on his backside drinking tea and eating biscuits, she reckoned it was up to her who she employed as help, and if he didn’t like it, he knew what he could do.

Lucy turned to go, smiling her thanks, but felt none the less dejected. She was sure that whoever had got the job would make sure they kept hold of it with Christmas looming and work being so hard to come by.

Having closed the shop door she turned the corner and bumped straight into Jennifer Finch. Lucy didn’t know the girl well as Jennifer was about four years younger than she was, and their mothers tended to be prickly with one another. Nevertheless, having gone to the same school, they usually said hello and perhaps stopped for a brief chat. Lucy was aware that in the past Jennifer had seemed to admire her from afar because she’d been popular and had had a lot of friends at Pooles Park School. Out of the two girls, Lucy preferred Jennifer’s twin, Katherine. She’d always seemed more interesting and less sulky. Since Lucy had been back living in London she’d seen Katherine out and about a few times and they’d waved at one another.

‘Where you off to in such a hurry?’ Lucy asked with a smile.

‘Late back fer work after me dinner break,’ Jennifer replied, coming to a halt. ‘Hope the old bag sacks me, actually. Never wanted to work in that poxy sweet shop anyhow. It was me mum’s idea; I only took it to shut her up moaning.’

‘You’ve got the job at Dobson’s?’

Jennifer nodded glumly. ‘Worst luck. I’m after getting a position in one of the big department stores. I’m applying to Selfridges after Christmas. I’ve just turned fifteen.’

Lucy affected to look encouraging despite knowing Jennifer would have to wait till she was older, and had an impressive reference, to get a sales position in Oxford Street. But Lucy believed everybody was entitled to dream and have ambition.

‘Well, if you don’t want it, I’ll take it. I’m after a job.’

Jennifer looked surprised. ‘Thought you was working in service.’

‘I was, but I’m back home now so I can look after me mum.’

‘She’s still limping badly, ain’t she?’ Jennifer said sympathetically, leaning back against the wall as though she’d forgotten about getting back to work and was settling down for a long chat. ‘I saw her out walking with one of your sisters and she was struggling to keep up.’

‘Hadn’t you best get back to work if you’re late?’ Lucy cocked her head towards the sweet shop.

As Jennifer trudged on with a grimace, Lucy turned to watch her. Suddenly she realised she might not be wasting her time going back to see Mrs Dobson tomorrow ...

Chapter Seven

Ada Stone knew she was being watched.

She strolled away from the rack of elegant day dresses and approached a display of winter coats. With practised nonchalance she checked the size of a garment and smoothed her fingers over the tweed, inspecting its quality. A legitimate customer with twelve guineas to spare would have felt entitled to inspect an intended purchase. But Ada wasn’t about to buy anything from this shop, although she had previously selected several nice blouses. At present those were secreted about her person in cavernous pockets within her clothes, roomy enough to hide more choice items, and before she left the store, Ada was determined to fill them.

The thin-faced fellow in a pinstriped suit moved to follow Ada, stopping at a display counter adjacent to the coats. He positioned himself so he could still covertly observe her from beneath the brim of his hat.

Ada could have laughed. If he thought he was a professional he was mistaken. She’d spotted him a mile off, not long after she’d entered Debenham and Freebody. In her opinion he resembled a pensioned off flat-foot who’d got himself a store walker’s job to keep out of his wife’s way.

Her amusement withered away. Luckily, he’d only been on her tail since she’d settled by the dresses. She’d managed to get one off the hanger and had been ready to stuff it out of sight when she’d noticed he was on to her. With great composure she’d strolled to the nearest mirror, held the gown up against her and deliberated on her reflection. Then she’d carefully returned the garment to the rail. He hadn’t caught her out and she wasn’t about to confirm his suspicions that she was up to no good. If he tried to arrest her, she was confident she could outrun him to the exit but she was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. She’d got her eye on several other nice pieces to nab; Bill would praise her to the skies if she managed to return to Lambeth up to the gills in classy merchandise.

And if her useless associate would play her part properly Ada knew it was possible she would saunter out onto Oxford Street in a few minutes’ time looking as though she’d doubled in size.

Today, Ada Stone would have been unrecognisable to her erstwhile colleagues at Mortimer House. She had a polished veneer as befitted a patron of an expensive store. A smart velvet cloche hat was perched at a jaunty angle on her sleek bobbed hair; her coat was of dark blue cashmere and her new court shoes and matching gloves were of soft kid. Yet beneath her breath she began swearing like a navvy.

Mavis Pooley was supposed to be causing a distraction while Ada got on with the delicate business of thieving. Her co-conspirator, was just seventeen and on her first shoplifting jaunt. Mavis was equally well attired: she was not supposed to arouse suspicion before the appointed time. But her cues were going unheeded. Several times, Ada had given her a discreet nod yet still the young blonde remained dithering by a display of hats, looking nervous. Ada hadn’t wanted Mavis tagging along with her today; she’d guessed the younger woman would end up as more of a hindrance than a help.

But Bill had insisted Ada be the one to teach the new recruit the ropes. She was convinced that if the little trollop hadn’t been dropping her drawers for Bill for weeks, he wouldn’t have let Mavis wangle a place in their gang at all.

Ada squinted fiercely at Mavis, in the hope she’d snap out of her jitters, remember she was supposed to go to the door with an expensive item, and pretend to examine it in the light.

It was a trick Ada had learned from Betty Pickering. They’d made an excellent team and had used it successfully many times in the past. A store detective would always be drawn to a person who gave the impression they were about to leave with unpaid goods. The chief hoister was then left free to pilfer at will for some minutes. If lucky, they could disappear, unchallenged, into the crowd of West End shoppers.

Fifteen minutes ago Mavis had managed to keep a sales assistant occupied while Ada slipped the silk blouses out of sight. But they’d moved now to the more expensive stuff and Ada was keen to get done and escape.

It seemed Mavis had finally plucked up the courage to make her move. The young blonde grabbed a feathered hat and barged swiftly towards the exit, bumping into several people in her blind haste. Ada chuckled beneath her breath as the flat-foot started to attention, then raced after her. Ada realised that if the new girl got herself arrested on her first day it wouldn’t bother her one bit. She’d have Bill all to herself ...

Mavis’s panic made it seem she would run out onto Oxford Street with the hat but she remembered to halt sharply by the door to inspect it. Giggling softly, Ada turned her attention back to the rails and it took less than thirty seconds for three dresses to join the blouses she’d already tucked away. She liked the look of the tweed coat but knew it was too bulky to go into an inside pocket, despite the fact the clothes she wore were specially tailored to conceal large quantities of booty. Instead, she whipped it off its hanger and swung it casually about her shoulders like a cape.

Feeling unbearably hot and heavy, Ada made her way swiftly towards the exit, endeavouring to remain inconspicuous by keeping close to groups of people. As soon as she noticed Mavis blushing and batting her lashes at the security guard, who now looked soppy, Ada went out of another door, and melted away into the West End throng.

Despite icy gusts cooling her face Ada was sweating by the time she reached the alley where her receiver was waiting to relieve her of the clothes. Gratefully she shrugged off the heavy tweed, then began to pull the dresses and blouses from their hiding places.

Charlie North packed the merchandise into a suitcase. Within three minutes of their efficient meeting, they were both going their separate ways, due to reconvene later to repeat the exercise.

Once more ‘clean’, Ada sauntered back into view and began mingling again with early Christmas shoppers with the intention of raiding a different store. First, she needed to catch up with Mavis and she hoped the pest hadn’t forgotten where their rendevouz point was.

Ada had hardly gone a hundred yards towards Marble Arch when through the crowd she spotted the weasel-faced store detective with a policeman at his side. She realised immediately the fellow had found the empty hangers and had rumbled that she’d been in cahoots with a decoy. Now he was out searching for her, perhaps both of them. Mavis had been instructed to make herself scarce immediately after she’d fulfilled her role and head to their meeting place. Ada just hoped that her accomplice had got clean away because she wouldn’t put it past the snivelling wretch to grass them all up under police interrogation.

With a bitter curse Ada ducked down her head, pulled up her collar and weaved a path to safety. She knew she’d be going home to Lambeth early and that annoyed her because she’d seen some smashing shoes recently in Selfridges.

‘I’ve been hanging about waiting for her by Marble Arch!’ Ada was so enraged that the finger she had pointing at Mavis was violently trembling. ‘I’d’ve been better off doin’ the job on me own. The cowardly bitch nearly got the both of us arrested in Debenhams.’

Ada continued stamping to and fro in the back room of the Windsor pub, sucking on a cigarette. ‘And I ain’t taking her with me again, so don’t go asking me, Bill. See if one of the others will have the useless article on their backs.’ She glowered, waiting for Bill to side with her and bawl the new girl out.

If anything, Bill was sliding his latest young fancy encouraging glances.

‘Time she was sent packin’, Ada stormed, unpinning her hat and throwing it down on the table.

‘Cut her some slack, will yer, Ada?’ Bill drawled soothingly. ‘Be different next time. Virgin at it today, weren’t she?’ He twitched his head, giving Mavis a sly, sideways wink.

‘Only way she could be a bleedin’ virgin ’n’ all, ain’t it?’ Ada snarled sarcastically, staring hatefully at her rival for Bill’s affections.

A few minutes ago her resentment for Mavis had escalated when, hot and bothered, she’d entered the Windsor public house on Garnies Street and found the young blonde hadn’t bothered going to their rendezvous spot so had beaten her back from Oxford Street. Not only that, Mavis had been looking like the cat with the cream, cosying up to Bill’s side, sipping gin and tonic.

Having completed her initiation into the gang without mishap Mavis had begun to feel relaxed ... until Ada burst in, vinegar-faced and spouting her mouth off. As she listened to Ada’s criticism of her debut performance Mavis’s pretty features turned sulky. She knew there was truth in it but she wasn’t about to admit that to anybody, least of all Bill, even though she reckoned it was his fault she’d put on a poor show.

She’d spent last night with him and if she’d been acting dozy in the shop it was because she’d been tired: Bill hadn’t let her get any sleep till the early hours of the morning. Besides, she might be a novice thief but her parents weren’t, so in Mavis’s opinion Ada could get stuffed. The Pooleys’ criminal pedigree was superior to the Stones’ and that, Mavis calculated, gave her the right to be part of Bill’s set-up.

As soon as Mavis left school, she’d have happily gone into the family business. But her father had been against any of his kids taking up his and his wife’s seedy career. Mr Pooley had since died and Mrs Pooley had been less against seeing Mavis follow in her shoes as a shoplifter. Times were hard, and in Gill Pooley’s opinion, a girl did what she had to these days to get by. She’d encouraged Mavis’s relationship with Bill because she knew he’d look after her daughter while she learned the ropes. But she’d warned Mavis not to let the other girls push her around or to rely on Bill for too long. Mavis was heeding her mum’s advice. Bill Black might want her for now but as soon as Betty Pickering came out of gaol, she knew he’d drop her like a hot potato ... just as he would Ada.

‘Ain’t my fault you let the store detective get onto yer,’ Mavis sighed. She got up and sauntered towards Ada, swinging her hips and her gin to and fro. ‘If it hadn’t been fer me timing it just right you’d’ve had yer collar felt.’ She gave a contemptuous smirk. ‘I weren’t being a coward, see, I was being clever. I hung back playing me part on purpose. You’re lucky I helped you out best I could even though you was to blame for getting clocked. Then I scarpered straight away ’cos I knew the fellow would check the rails and call the police when he found stuff gone. You ought to be more subtle, Ada.’

‘That subtle enough for yer?’

Ada, her face boiling with rage, suddenly jerked Mavis’s arm up, flinging her drink into her face. She followed that up by punching the side of the young blonde’s head, sending her staggering into a chair, which crashed over.

By the time Bill sprang to separate them, Mavis was screaming abuse at the top of her voice and twisting a fistful of Ada’s mousy hair. A moment later Mavis howled as Ada bit her hand. As they wrestled back and forth, bashing into tables, one wobbled, sending several glasses smashing on the floor.

The landlord suddenly barged into the back room pulling the door to behind him. ‘Chrissake ... what’s going on, Bill?’ he ground out in an undertone. ‘Can hear the commotion in the saloon bar.’

Bill managed to elbow Ada forcefully away from Mavis, and the older woman went tottering back and landed on her backside on the floor. Mavis was shoved more gently in the opposite direction.

‘’S’all right, Jim,’ Bill breathlessly told the landlord. ‘Just a bit of a disagreement between the ladies, that’s all.’

‘Fuckin’ hell!’ Jim muttered. ‘I’ll be bleedin’ glad when Betty’s out.’ Jim Trent knew that most of the bust-ups between the women in Bill’s crew were caused by jealousy over him, not the value of the stuff they stole. Bill couldn’t say no to any of the little scrubbers. At least when Betty was about he managed to keep his fly buttoned a bit more often.

‘Get going.’ Bill jerked his head at the door, but gave Mavis a little smile to soften her dismissal.

Mavis straightened her clothes in a couple of tugs. Having patted her blonde waves into place she collected her handbag and sashayed out. The landlord followed her, then stopped at the door, wordlessly pointing at the broken glass and overturned furniture.

‘I’ll see to damages, Jim,’ Bill said, all affable. ‘You know I always do, mate.’

Jim couldn’t argue with that. On a previous occasion when Bill had caused mayhem and nearly killed a bloke in his pub, a pile of banknotes had been slapped down onto the splintered bar counter before the victor and his cronies sauntered on their way. Jim gave a nod of acceptance and disappeared.

Bill turned back to Ada to find she was still sitting on the floor examining a stained hand. Suddenly she scrambled up and started pulling hysterically at her clothes to view the back of her skirt. She held out crimson fingers towards him, shaking them angrily. ‘Look! I’ve only sat on glass and cut me bleedin’ arse! That fuckin’ bitch! She’s made me cut me bleedin’ arse! I’m gonna have her right now!’

Bill scraped together shards with a foot while grabbing at Ada’s arm to prevent her charging after Mavis and starting another scrap. He began rubbing and patting Ada’s back in an attempt to calm her down. ‘Let’s take a look,’ he said soothingly. ‘Probably ain’t more than a scratch.’

Ada tried to tug free of his grip but when he lifted her skirt and petticoat she quietened and sent him a sideways look. Turning her around so her back was to him he pulled aside her bloodstained drawers then bent to take a look at the gash. It was long and deep, and he knew it needed stitches. Bill drew out a handkerchief from his pocket and folded it into a wad to press against the wound and staunch the flow of blood. He could sense Ada was still bubbling with rage and knew of only one sure way to distract her from going after Mavis and creating merry hell. His free hand began sensually kneading the spare flesh of her undamaged buttock.

‘We’ll get a stitch or two put in that for you by the doc and you’ll be good as new come supper time.’ He leaned closer and nipped at her ear with his teeth. ‘Then later on, Ada, I’ll kiss it all better for yer. Like that won’t yer, gel?’

Ada shoved her spine against his chest, squirming her bottom against his fondling hand and deliberately parted her thighs in wordless demand.

As Ada’s head fell back Bill impassively watched her grimace and groan as he thrust his fingers to and fro. Of the two women, he preferred Mavis. She was better looking and, even at her tender age, had a bit more finesse about her, in and out of bed.

But Ada was the one to keep sweet because she was an instinctive, versatile thief with rare skills that were earning him a fortune. Only Betty was her superior, and she was languishing in Holloway and no use to him at all.

Bill had guessed that Mavis might not be up to much when she was under pressure. He’d also known that if anybody could teach her tricks, Ada could.

Ada had done a fine job at Mortimer House, lifting fabulous jewellery. She’d got him more than he’d wanted by bringing the suite of emeralds out with her and getting clean away. It had been days ago and he was now confident there’d be no comebacks. After the tale Ada had told him about those perverted women he’d expected it might get hushed up. It still made him chuckle and feel horny just thinking about Ada catching those two old girls at it ...

As Ada writhed and bucked Bill jerked free his fingers and wiped them clean with his handkerchief. He then pressed the linen back against her bleeding bottom. ‘Hold that on there, Ada,’ he ordered and started counting out some cash pulled from his pocket to give to the landlord on the way out. ‘Now, come on, gel, get a move on,’ he barked impatiently as Ada wallowed in a sensual haze, propped against a table. ‘It’s time to go and get your backside sorted out.’

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