Smartly dressed young waiters were walking around with trays of champagne. Macca grabbed two glasses and handed one to Vinny. ‘Just sip it, OK? You mustn’t get plastered,’ he reminded Vinny.

‘What’s them things?’ Vinny pointed to the small items of food on trays. He had barely eaten all day and now felt ravenous.

‘Hors d’oeuvres, my aunt calls ’em. I’ll grab us some. You need to eat. Your eyes still look glazed.’

Spotting her nephew and Vinny, Auntie Marnie walked towards them, beaming. ‘How are my two favourite gents this evening? You look very dapper, I must say.’ Marnie locked arms with both lads. She had a good little earner out of her parties. The first couple of drinks she would provide for free, then the guests would buy their own. Most drank champagne or fine wine, which Marnie got for peanuts off a friend who sold the finest bootleg booze. She also stocked the best spirits and her prices were not cheap.

Even when Marnie had paid her lads, the waiters and jazz band, she’d clear over five hundred pounds per party. She wasn’t a mean woman either. Any tips her staff made, she allowed them to keep for themselves.

‘Don’t forget, Vinny. When you greet the ladies, you peck them on both cheeks and no asking any awkward questions, OK?’

‘I won’t, Auntie Marnie,’ Vinny replied. Marnie liked all the lads to refer to her as their aunt.

Marnie smiled. ‘OK then. Let me introduce you to some of our lovely ladies.’

Vinny gulped the rest of his drink and snatched another off the tray. This was it. Shit or bust time.

‘Sit down, Queen. You’ll wear your new carpet out, pacing up and down like that,’ urged Albie.

Queenie’s brain was working overtime. ‘When I find out where that club is, I’ll rip that pervert of a woman’s head off. I’ll give her fucking Marnie, the dirty whore. How dare she employ my fourteen-year-old son to entertain a bunch of fucking queers?’

‘You said yourself he lied about his age, Queen. You can’t go up to Soho creating havoc if Vinny lied.’

‘I can do what I bastard-well like. You might be gutless and ballless, Albie, but I bleedin’ well ain’t,’ Queenie bellowed.

‘As you said earlier, love, Vinny can look after himself. He’ll be home soon and we can have it out with him then.’

‘But he might not be home soon, that’s what I’m worried about. There’s some private party going on tonight. I wish I knew the bloody address. I’d be up there like a rocket and drag him out by his poxy hair. Then I’d give every pervert in there what for.’ Queenie sat on the sofa and put her head in her hands. Her own awful experience came flooding back, how that dirty bastard had tricked her and then done what he had. ‘Say they get him drunk, Albie? Or drug him? If anyone touches my boy, I’ll kill ’em with me own bare hands. I swear I will.’