She’d be better off lifting something with a plastic strap from a display in a department store. More her style. More in keeping with her budget.

However: she had faithfully promised the magistrate she wouldn’t do that again, because she had a job now, and was taking responsibility for her life, just as her solicitor and her probation officer had told her to say. It was a promise that, to everyone’s surprise, including hers, she’d kept for nine weeks now, along with the job they’d got her.

She hadn’t had to take it. She could have told them to stick it – except that everyone was expecting her to, and that, perversely had made her jut her chin and say she’d do it. It had probably been the deciding factor in keeping her out of Holloway.

Mary turned from the window and the dazzling reflections of light. The street, though busy with black taxis and red buses, late-night theatre goers and rich kids, seemed dark and mean. It didn’t help that the sky was so low: bulbous clouds descended almost to the rooftops, pregnant with rain, turning the harsh sodium glare a deeper red.

From away over Richmond, the first growl of thunder reached Leicester Square. For a moment, the sound stilled every other noise. People looked up, realised they were unprepared for a downpour, and contemplated their choices.

By the time Mary finished her shift, it would be morning and the storm would have blown over. She’d walk all the way back, tired and dirty, to her hostel along the freshly washed pavements. But still, inexplicably, despite everything, free. Not exactly free: she had regular meetings with her probation officer, a wispy thing called Anna who didn’t seem at all afraid of her, and then there was her Anger Management course, which wasn’t a surprise in the slightest, and her supervisor at work who would rat her out in an instant if she didn’t turn up on the dot.

But free all the same. There were compensations to working for the Underground. The other – aside from not being banged up for twenty-three hours a day, or whatever the current regime demanded – was the people she worked with.

It was like clocking in with the United Nations every day, but she was a London girl and fine with that, though some of the accents were difficult – not just at first, either. Supervisor aside, and he really was a prime piece of shit, the rest of the crew didn’t seem to mind her past, or her future for that matter. All that counted was whether she pulled her weight in the now.

She lugged her heavy bag across the road against the flow of traffic, towards the tube entrance. Another low boom echoed from the west, and the waverers decided against stopping for that last drink, heading for the stairs too.