Nancy was about to stammer a reply when Billy added, ‘Well, we haven’t got none, so it’ll have to be nice and black.’

After Billy had handed her the hot tea, Nancy began to feel, if not better then at least a little more in control. She looked around, taking in the vast porcelain wash tubs, the great grey flagstones on which they sat, and the abandoned buckets and mops.

‘What is this place?’ she whispered.

‘Now that’s a story,’ grinned Billy. ‘See, there was a time when everything got laundered right here, in the hotel. You’d have washerwomen in here, day and night, scrubbing stains out of sheets and hanging them out to dry on those radiators yonder end. Well, things was easy before the Depression, but then it hit. Maynard Charles was like a captain of a sinking ship. Spent day and night baling out water, just to stay afloat. And one night he figures, well, I can save costs on the hotel laundry if I send it all out to one of those industrial laundries south of the river. Forty staff given their marching orders, and all so a few extra shillings could be saved. All you’d have had to do to save them, o’ course, would have been to charge a few of the counts and baronesses who stay in this place a little extra every night – but, well, the world doesn’t work like that, does it? The rich have got to be looked after, while the rest of us rot. And that . . . that’s why I tell you, Nancy, don’t let ’em see you cry. Don’t let them think you’re struggling. Mrs Moffatt won’t let on, but things ain’t exactly running like clockwork in this hotel even now. The Depression might be gone, but that stuff’s like a bad stink. It lingers. And now there’s the Imperial putting on its cabarets. The Savoy’s had its own ballroom refitted. Old Mr Charles, he’s more worried than I seen him. He’ll be debating more culls, I shouldn’t wonder. Wondering where he can start saving costs again. He’s staked everything the hotel has on this Christmas and New Year. If we have the best festivities, if all the society pages are talking about is what happened at the Buckingham Hotel, well, we’ll get through another year – and another after that . . .’

Billy had been talking for so long and so quickly that he had quite forgotten why he had brought Nancy Nettleton here. Only now did he remember. ‘Nance!’ he laughed. ‘Here am I rabbiting on about lords and ladies and society and . . . there’s you, on the wrong end of Miss Edgerton. I . . .’

Nancy was taking small sips of the scalding tea, but at the mention of Miss Edgerton’s name, something cracked in her. She started to sob.