‘You’ll catch your death out here. Look, oughtn’t you to be up in your quarters this time o’ night? Mrs Moffatt doesn’t care for midnight creepers, does she? But if you were to get back up there, well, nobody’d . . .’ Billy stopped. Nancy was not paying a blind bit of notice to anything he was saying. She was staring, instead, off across the square, and one of the roads leading east towards Regent Street and Oxford Circus.

‘Billy, are you done for the day?’

‘I should say so, Nance. I been here since dawn.’

She took his hand.

‘Nance?’

‘I’ve got to go that way,’ she said. ‘Come with me, Billy?’

Billy was bewildered. ‘Where to?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but . . .’ One more glance across the square told her that it was nearly too late. The silhouettes had disappeared. They were already gone. ‘I’m going!’ she exclaimed. ‘Off into the night. Me, a lowly chambermaid with barely any idea how to get around in London town! If you won’t chaperone me, Billy, I’ll have to chaperone myself.’

She took three great strides out into the square, but soon she heard the clatter of footsteps behind her.

‘Changed your mind have you, Billy?’ she said, with a sudden spring in her step. There was nothing like the feeling of being spontaneous, not when you’d been buttoned down caring for other people your whole life. To do something frivolous and be free to do it – was there any greater joy?

‘It’s not that, Nance . . .’

‘Well, what is it?’ she asked, finally reaching the corner and catching sight of Raymond’s silhouette up ahead.

‘It’s just – you still got my coat, Nancy.’

Nancy stopped. ‘Come on, Billy. Haven’t you the taste for a little adventure?’ She remembered Raymond’s words. Well, it can’t be the Buckingham Hotel each and every night now, can it? ‘They’re getting away. Where they go, I want to go. Isn’t that a way to lead your life?’

But as she marched stridently after them, ignoring the protest of her bad leg, Nancy had the distinct feeling that, wherever they were going and whatever they were doing tonight, it was not something a mere chambermaid like her was supposed to see.

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

LONG, NARROW BERWICK STREET WAS quiet after dark. All of the market traders had long ago packed up and gone home. But the noises flurrying up from the doorway at the bottom of the market, where the lane narrowed to cobbles and the darker reaches of Soho beyond, were of piano and trumpet, and the raucous cheers of a hundred people dancing. The sign above the door read THE MIDNIGHT ROOMS in florid script.