‘Why don’t you buy yourself a new pair?’

‘I would if I had the money, but I don’t have a bean until the end of the week.’ Dulcie picked up her sewing again reluctantly and stabbed at it with the needle. ‘I hate being poor,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll bet Saunders will never have to mend her stockings once she’s married to Roger Wallace.’

Not that she needed to mend them anyway, Dulcie thought. Sylvia Saunders’ father managed a bank, and the family lived in great comfort in a leafy London suburb. Sylvia had gone to boarding school and rode ponies and played tennis and all kinds of other things that wealthy, well-bred young women did. She had certainly never had to travel around in her father’s cart at harvest time, looking for work, or sleep in a hay loft in the middle of winter.

No, Sylvia probably threw out her stockings at the first sign of a hole.

‘Why do you think Roger chose her?’ She asked the question that had been bothering her ever since she had heard the news.

‘What?’ Grace looked startled. ‘Goodness, I don’t know. He fell in love with her, I suppose.’

‘Yes, but why? She’s not even pretty.’

‘I think she is.’

Dulcie frowned. Grace was a loyal friend, but she didn’t always say the things friends should say.

‘All right, I suppose she is, in an insipid sort of way.’ She put her hand up and touched the brown curls that framed her own face. No one could ever call her insipid.

Roger used to love her curls. He used to try and count them, winding them around his fingers. She couldn’t imagine him doing that with Sylvia’s fine, silvery hair.

‘I wonder if it’s because she’s rich?’ Dulcie mused. Sylvia seemed to have that self-satisfied sheen about her, the kind that people with money always had.

Roger Wallace had it too, which was what had first attracted Dulcie to him.

‘I don’t know why people fall in love with each other,’ Grace said. ‘They just do, don’t they? They can’t help themselves.’

‘What utter nonsense,’ Dulcie said, attacking her sewing more vigorously. She had already made up her mind that she was going to make Roger fall in love with her.

Now all she had to do was win him back from Sylvia Saunders.

CHAPTER THREE

Anna reached Chambord Street just as the pubs were turning out. Men spilled onto the pavement, laughing and jostling each other and complaining about the rain. They loomed out of the darkness towards her, but Anna wasn’t afraid. She had grown up in Bethnal Green, she knew every cobbled alleyway and gas-lit street.

She knew most of the people, too. As she turned the corner, Anna saw Mr Hudson, who owned the butcher’s next door to their shop, leaning against a lamp post outside the Angel and Crown. He was trying to light a cigarette but seemed to be having a lot of trouble finding his mouth with the match. Anna watched him struggling for a moment, then she approached him.