Now it was the day before Christmas Eve, and he had arranged to meet Polly after work in a little cafe they’d been to once or twice. Taking her hand, he said, ‘The locket is to celebrate us finding each other as much as Christmas, Polly, and I don’t want you to buy me anything, all right? Just being with you is sufficient for me. I adore you, Polly, you must know that? But this Miss Morgan of yours works you too hard,’ he added playfully. ‘You say you’ll be working right up to the last minute on Christmas Eve?’

Polly nodded. ‘But it’s not her fault,’ she said earnestly. ‘We’ve got a client who is getting married on Boxing Day of all days and she’s been a right pain. First she was having two bridesmaids and then four, and we’re making all the dresses, and now she’s having a flower girl too at the last minute. Miss Morgan has got to alter the client’s dress an’ all because she’s put on a bit the last month or two. She came in today for her last fitting and was supposed to take the dress away with her, but the buttons wouldn’t do up. They go right from the neck to below her waist at the back, loads of little pearl things, they are.’

Daniel didn’t give a fig about the buttons or the bride, but he nodded as though he was hanging on Polly’s every word.

‘Miss Morgan said it’s a good job she was planning to have a quiet Christmas this year and just go to her mam’s on Christmas Day for dinner, because she won’t get the dress done till the last minute tomorrow. It’s not fair, how some of the clients are. Just because they’re well off they expect miracles. They don’t think the likes of us have a life an’ all.’

Daniel nodded sympathetically. So Ruby was going to be alone on Christmas Eve. Perfect. All good things come to him who waits. He looked out of the cafe window at the snow that was falling. It had started that morning and they were saying more was on the way so most folk would get their shopping done early and hunker down tomorrow, which meant the shops wouldn’t stay open late. The market would, but that was a good distance from Ruby’s shop. He’d have plenty of uninterrupted time to do all he intended to her. It had been the thought of that which had kept him going the last few years when Lonnie Gray and his gang had had their way with him. A huge man with arms on him like tree trunks, Lonnie, a lifer, had been the undisputed leader of the prisoners and he’d had a penchant for what he called ‘pretty boys’. What he’d suffered . . .

‘Daniel?’