‘No.’ Jenny lifted her head. ‘My so-called family can do what they like. I’ll never go back there, and they won’t be able to force me to do anything I don’t want to now.’

‘Bravo!’ Ma slapped her hand on the arm of her chair. ‘Just let them show their faces round here and I’ll give them a piece of my mind. They’ve treated you real bad, and they don’t deserve to have a lovely girl like you. But you’re all grown up now and don’t need them.’

The thought of Ma laying into her mother and Aunt Gertrude with her colourful vocabulary had Jenny laughing out loud. She had just lost her job, didn’t know how they were going to manage – and she didn’t care! This was more home to her than the Bloomsbury house had ever been. And Ma, Glad, Fred and Ivy were closer to her than her own flesh and blood.

‘So.’ Ma held her gaze steadily. ‘Are you Eugenie Winford or Jenny Baker?’

‘Jenny Baker,’ she answered without hesitation.

Ma gave a satisfied smile. ‘Well, Jenny Baker, we’d better decide what’s to be done, hadn’t we?’

An hour later they were no nearer a solution, and Jenny gazed at Ma in disgust. ‘I’m useless. I can’t sew, can’t knit, don’t know anything about business.’

‘You ain’t useless,’ Ma corrected sharply, then her eyes twinkled. ‘You can scrub a fine step.’

Her gloom disappeared and she grinned at the elderly woman. ‘The best one in the street, but that doesn’t help us to eat. No one round here’s got money to pay me to scrub their steps.’ Jenny’s hand went to the pendant around her neck.

‘You can forget that, my girl. That was a present from your dad and you ought to keep it as a reminder of him. We should be all right for a while. I’ve got the rent put by for a couple of weeks, and there’s a few bob in my purse.’

‘And I’ve got seven and sixpence.’ Jenny had been saving to go out with Edna when she had a whole day off, but that would have to wait now. She stood up. ‘I’d better get some shopping.’

‘Go to Fred and Stan’s stall, Jen. They’re having a tough time. If people can’t buy what they’ve got, then they can’t buy for the next day’s trading. They’ve taken to going late to the Covent Garden Market and buying when the traders reduce their prices to get rid of the stuff. It ain’t the top-quality veg they’re used to selling, but it’s cheap, and that’s what the women want.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’ Jenny was even more worried about her friends now. ‘Ivy didn’t tell me.’