Those are the happy memories, thought Raymond, as he looked at his brother. The blacker ones come next. What it was like when the coppers trapped Pa and put him in Pentonville. What Artie and I got swept up in while he was gone just to put food on the table . . .

Artie was not quite as Raymond remembered him. When they had been boys, Artie had always been the rounder one, but now he was rangy and thin. That, Raymond supposed, was what a stretch in Pentonville Prison could do to you. It had been the same for their father.

‘You look . . . well, Artie.’

‘Ha!’ Artie cackled, displaying a mouth in which two teeth had been knocked out in a prison cell brawl. ‘I don’t, but you’re the same old charmer as ever, aren’t you, Ray?’

‘Is it good to be out, Artie?’

Artie beamed. ‘I can’t wait to get back inside.’

Aunts May and Rebecca hooted with laughter, but Mrs Cohen was less impressed. She picked up a ladle and made as if to wallop him with it.

‘No violence, Ma. They’d put you in solitary for that.’ Artie grinned as his mother humbly retreated. ‘I’m glad to be out, Ray, but it’s not all sweet tea and lemon cake out here. Inside, there was always work for us. Didn’t get paid for it, but you got your bed and board, if you see what I mean? Out here . . . Well, who wants to take on an old lag like me?’

‘He’s been trying for weeks, Ray, but it’s not like it used to be, not for the likes of us. There’s Mr Goldstein been out of work a year already, and all his sons just scraping by. They think you’re Jewish round here, now, and they wouldn’t piss on you if you was on fire. Oh, it was always there, that kind of nastiness. But now it’s out in the open, and no one pretends it isn’t. Your father and me, we had our fair share of it. And you’ll remember what the Furness boys was like when you were young – always yapping at you and your brother, on account of what you are. But things have changed, Ray. You won’t notice it in that ballroom o’ yours, but it’s not the same on the streets. There’s an . . . atmosphere. Some blackshirt boys turned over the butchers on the Commercial Road. They threw pig’s blood all up the steps at the Congregation of Jacob.’

‘Pah!’ snorted Artie. ‘What would Twinkle Toes care about that? He’s got more work than he knows what to do with.’