Miss Harringey, proprietor of the Bryant’s Court Hostel for Businesswomen, ushered Daisy into what she described as her ‘sanctum’, an overcrowded parlour on the ground floor, stuffed with furniture and framed photos, and where a small yellow canary in a cage looked out dismally through the barred windows at the London fog which was beginning to veil the streets.

Daisy was wearing one of the tweed suits purchased that day under a tweed coat with a beaver-fur trim. She was aware of Miss Harringey’s small black eyes studying her and wished she had bought second-hand clothes instead. Daisy’s own clothes back at Eaton square were mostly second-hand, but they were clothes that her mistress had usually worn only once and had taken a dislike to. She was sharply aware that what to Rose had been cheap clothes might look rather new and expensive to Miss Harringey.

Miss Harringey was a very solid woman, so corseted that she appeared to be wearing armour under her jet-covered woollen gown. Her face was large and heavy and her eyes disproportionately small. Her hair, an improbable shade of auburn, was worn in an Alexandria fringe.

‘I would like to make it plain, Miss . . . er . . .’

‘Levine.’

‘Miss Levine. We only take ladies of impeccable reputation here.’

The clothes, thought Daisy – she thinks I might be a kept woman, as if a kept woman would want to live here!

‘I can assure you,’ said Daisy primly, ‘that me and my friend, Miss Summer, lead very hard-working lives. No gentlemen callers, I can assure you.’

‘And where do you work?’

‘At Drevey’s Merchant Bank in the City. We’re office workers.’

‘I expect payment in advance.’

‘How much in advance?’

Miss Harringey said, ‘Three months.’

‘All right,’ said Daisy.

‘I have one double room available at the top of the house.’

‘Can’t we have separate rooms?’

‘None are available.’

‘I’d better see this room.’

‘Follow me.’

And so Daisy followed Miss Harringey up a narrow flight of stairs to the top of the house. There was a mixture of odours: gas, disinfectant, dry rot, baked potatoes, baked beans, and sour milk. And the all-pervasive smell of cabbage. ‘No cooking in the rooms,’ said Miss Harringey as she reached the top of the stairs. Daisy sniffed the air and wondered how many of the tenants obeyed that law.

‘This is it.’ Miss Harringey threw open the door.

In the middle of the room stood an iron bedstead covered in thin, worn blankets. There was a rickety dressing-table by the window with a chipped marble top which held a china ewer and basin decorated in fat roses and a mirror. The ‘wardrobe’ was simply a recess with a curtain over it. A table and two chairs stood by the grimy window. There was a small gas fire.