Ruby hadn’t slept well for the last two nights, tossing and turning and worrying about Ellie, and then when she did fall into a restless slumber having disturbing nightmares she couldn’t remember the moment she woke up. She had spent the previous day with Mabel, taking her landlady out to lunch before she had treated her to a Charlie Chaplin film at the local picture house. She’d long since realized Mabel was lonely and that her gruffness was a way of coping with the grief she felt about her husband and son, but in spite of their friendship which had grown over the last months, she also knew Mabel was narrow-minded and fixed in her views and if she had breathed a word about Ellie’s circumstances to the landlady, Mabel would never countenance Ellie stepping over her threshold again.

Not that there was much chance of that, Ruby reflected miserably as she got ready for her proposed lunch with Clarissa. Ellie was completely under Daniel’s control and while she was useful to him he would make sure she went nowhere. Part of her wished Bridget had never told her the truth because the pain of knowing was raw. She had never liked Daniel, but before Bridget had confided in her she had been able to comfort herself that Ellie was happy. Or perhaps fool herself was the right word? Whatever, the reality of Ellie’s life now was so much worse than anything her worrying had conjured up in the past.

She dressed carefully in a simple pale-grey skirt and jacket she had only finished making some weeks before, teaming it with a buttercup-yellow blouse and stylish hat in the same shade that framed her face and gave her brown eyes gold tints. It was the first time she’d had an occasion to wear the outfit, which she’d copied from a picture in Vogue magazine; it was too grand for everyday life and definitely upper-class, but it had been the last project before she had left her classes with Madame Poiret and she had wanted to impress her tutor. The little Frenchwoman had been fulsome in her praise of her star pupil, so much so that Ruby had been somewhat embarrassed when she was held up as the goal the others should model their aspirations on.