His father’s face creased. Almost three decades he’d been up long before dawn and travelling down to the fish market. Sometimes, Billy thought, he seemed to look at the things Billy brought home and wonder: was it all worth it? Surely, surely, there must have been a better way to make a living than fish? Billy remembered the first time he’d seen the look ghost across his father’s face. It was not envy, as he’d once believed. Nor was it shame – though there was certainly some shame in it, for Billy had sometimes brought home more in a day than his father could in a week. It was, instead, a kind of bewilderment that there were people out there for whom this was nothing: people like Lord Edgerton, like Maynard Charles, people who danced for a living like the debonair Raymond de Guise. There was not one world, Billy’s father understood; there were two, one for the rich and one for the poor, and by some strange magic, his son got to flit between the two.

‘That reminds me, Pa . . .’

Billy produced a small brown envelope, printed with the emblem of the Buckingham Hotel, and handed it to his father. When his father peered inside, he froze. ‘Son, we’ve spoken about—’

‘Pa, I told you. It’s because of tips. I get little gifts when I run errands for the guests, or for the concierge, or for almost anybody. You don’t get something for nothing. I provide that something. Pa, that’s what I’m there for.’

‘Yes, son. But . . . this?’

He was counting the coins and notes with his fingers, scarcely able to believe. All this? It had scarcely been a week since Billy last came home with pockets full and jangling.

‘Goodnight, Pa.’

Billy loped up the stairs to the little box room that was his own: an old mattress on the floor, a little tea chest filled with his odds and ends, a rack where his ma had laid out clothes for the morning (because, though he might have been seventeen, she was still his mother). He had already flopped onto the bed, eager for a night’s rest, when he realised his pa had followed him.

‘You’ll be watching yourself, won’t you, son?’ he said.

‘Pa, I’ve told you. It’s just odd errands. You don’t understand these folks. There’s folks who’d pay you a whole day’s rate up at Billingsgate just to get down and shine their shoes. There’s some who’ll throw you a pound note if you’re happy to wipe their arse.’

Billy’s father purpled. ‘There you go, with that smart tongue o’ yours. Just you make sure that Mr Maynard Charles doesn’t get wind of it. You lose this job, you’ll be hard pressed finding another. We need that hotel.’