‘How did you know he were uncouth?’ Jimmy said suspiciously. ‘You can’t have heard more than muttering.’

His new friend smiled. ‘Didn’t you wonder why I opened the back door so suddenly? My front window is a poor fit and I heard them outside, arguing about whether you’d gone down the side passage into the jigger. The language they used was pretty choice, I can tell you.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Jimmy said. He took a sip of his soup, then a large swallow. ‘I say, this is delicious. It’s days – no, more like weeks – since I had a proper hot meal; Mrs Huxtable is no cook. But she occasionally buys a shop pie and we might just get a smidgen of that.’ He looked at the woman now sitting opposite him. ‘What I’m goin’ to tell you will sound pretty far-fetched, and the worst of it is we don’t know ourselves what’s at the bottom of it. So I’d better start right at the beginning when old Ma Huxtable sent me to the wash house with a pile of tablecloths and that, and give our Mo a big sack of sprouts to clean so she could sell ’em to the neighbours for their Christmas dinner . . .’

When he had finished he looked hopefully at his companion. It was such an unlikely story; could she possibly make sense of it? But it seemed that she could, for she was nodding slowly. Jimmy saw no need to explain about Mo’s activity with the bootlaces. After all, Cyril had fallen down the stairs many times before, and never suffered any lasting ill effects. ‘What I can’t make out, though, is what Cyril thinks we’ve stolen. Mo says he had a glittery necklace; I can’t think where he would have got such a thing, but maybe that’s what he thinks we took. Or maybe it was the Christmas presents – we just don’t know.’

‘Yes, I do see,’ the woman said thoughtfully. ‘But you haven’t got to find whatever it is he thinks you stole, just prove you weren’t the ones who took it.’

Jimmy shook his head. ‘All Mo took were the things in the parcel, but they was meant for her and me anyhow – a teddy bear for Mo and a harmonica for me. But Cyril’s the sort of feller what only has one idea in his mind at a time. Also, he’s what you might call a man of violence. He’d enjoy beating me and Mo to a pulp whether or not he believed we’d took his property. He’s a wicked man, Miss – Miss . . .’

‘Yes, it’s about time we learned each other’s names,’ the woman said. She was tall and straight with pale blonde hair, rather like his mother’s, done up in a fancy braid at the back of her head. She was neatly but not gaudily dressed, in a grey pleated skirt, a white blouse and a navy blue cardigan, with sensible lace-up shoes on her feet and the sort of stockings which Jimmy knew from his times on Harry’s stall to be called lisle. The woman smiled as his eyes took in every detail of her appearance. ‘My name’s Miss Trent; Glenys Trent, to be exact. And you are . . .?’