Her abductor turned to face her. Slapping her hard across the face, he said: ‘Shut your trap before I punch your head in now instead of later.’

It was said in a low voice, completely devoid of emotion. Ginelle stared into the hard face and felt a sinking sensation somewhere in the region of her bowels.

But she shut up.

One thing in Ginelle’s favour, she was clever enough to know when she was in trouble and knew instinctively that tonight she was in the worst trouble of her life.

The thing that puzzled her was, why? What on earth had she done? She racked her brain for the remainder of the journey, staring vacantly at the red neck of the large man in front driving the car.

Ginelle was dragged from the car on the quay of the East India Docks. She stood in her ridiculous heels as various foreign sailors walked past, all looking at her with admiration tinged with fear, because of the two large men beside her.

They walked her between them, towards a small cabin that smelt strongly of molasses. Tearing her arms away, Ginelle began to run, her shoes giving the two men an unfair advantage.

The bigger man laughed as he caught up with her. He dragged her roughly back towards the cabin. By now she was shouting and screaming. Something inside Ginelle told her that if she entered that cabin it would be the end of her, and with a strength born of desperation she fought the man, her crimson-tipped nails flying dangerously close to his face. Taking back a large hairy fist he dealt her a blow to the side of the head that left her sprawling on the floor in the dirt and the mud, her ears ringing.

Men were watching the proceedings with shining eyes. Her dress had risen up in the tumble and her stocking tops were exposed; her silk drawers, freshly washed and pressed, smeared with dirt. Picking her up by her coat, the big man half dragged, half-pushed her towards the cabin.

Ginelle was looking around her at the sailors, beseeching them with her eyes. She realised in a daze that some of the men were London dockers, all watching her and not one doing anything about it. They thought she was a dockside harpy. They didn’t realise she worked for one of the most exclusive houses in the smoke, Briony Cavanagh’s Mayfair house. That Tommy Lane was her boss along with Big Briony, as she was known, even though she was so tiny. That she commanded a fortune from men because she was a star of certain films shown to a select clientele, men who paid money to see her, and afterwards to bed her. She was someone of account, she was not a sailors’ darling, she was important, important enough to be on first name terms with her employers.