It was getting dark. She was late.

The houses along Brixton Hill had once been grand residences, the perfect imitation of the bigger townhouses that Hélène looked out on from her Buckingham quarters each day. But it had been a generation and more since the railways came and the once desirable residences had been partitioned, partitioned again, leased and sold off to whoever could afford them. Now some of the facades looked ancient, and black with smoke.

Sudbourne Road was one of the lesser terraces, but even here the buildings had been carved up and carved up again. Hélène stood outside one and felt a rush of warmth. The lights were on in the basement flat. Through the walls, she could hear the sound of somebody playing a trumpet – not as expertly, perhaps, as Louis Kildare and the rest of the Archie Adams Band, but with a certain kind of amateur flair that, nevertheless, made her heart soar.

If only Maynard Charles could see me now, Hélène thought, with a wry smile. If only he knew what I was really doing in that year I was away from the Buckingham Hotel! He’d have one of his fits . . .

She gently knocked on the door.

The lady who answered was diminutive in stature. She was wrapped in a cream shawl, and underneath that a simple house dress and apron. The slippers on her feet were evidently her husband’s, for they were far too big. Upon seeing Hélène, her face broke into an irrepressible grin and she opened up her arms to take her in. Hélène bent down, so that the elder lady could press her wrinkled black cheek against Hélène’s own.

‘Noelle,’ Hélène whispered.

‘We’ve missed you, girl.’

‘I know. I know, Auntie.’

Then Hélène was through the doors, the sound of the trumpet playing stopped, and on Sudbourne Road a miniature celebration began.

*

Maurice and Noelle Archer had lived in this same basement flat for fifteen years. Twenty years as a merchant seaman, plying British waters even when the whole world was at war, had left Maurice Archer with a payout to be proud of and an invitation from His Majesty to settle in the home of the Commonwealth, to take work as a office clerk or railway worker, whatever his skills and situations allowed. It was an opportunity that Maurice had grasped with both hands (though it had taken his sweet wife, Noelle, a little longer to start believing). London, so different from the sun-kissed Caribbean island they called home, had not welcomed them with street parades and notices in The Times, but in 1921 it had become a new home – a new start in a bolder, more prosperous land.