‘There’s information in here about the Forties,’ Annie continues. ‘The sort of information that only we know. How would a reporter have found out you were stepping out with Billy Walsh unless you told them?’

‘I’m not stepping out with Billy Walsh, so it wasn’t me.’

‘Just lying on your back for him, then,’ Edith mutters, ducking her head when Ruby glares at her.

‘But how would a reporter in Kensington know that? And all this other stuff about Debenham and Freebody – which floor you were working when Alice was arrested, and how you distract the shop girls?’

‘How the hell do I know?’

Annie drops the paper and grabs Ruby by the back of the neck again, twisting her fingers into the hair at the nape before pulling Ruby close and hissing into her ear.

‘You were already in for a hiding, Ruby. You’re forever trying to keep your steals, you greedy little bitch. But now this? No one shares secrets about the Forties. Not with the coppers and not with the newspapers, do you hear me? I don’t know who you think you are, Ruby Mills, with your “film-star face” and your “modern style”, but here in the Borough, you’re one of my girls.’ Annie’s voice begins to rise in pitch and volume. Everyone in the Crown is listening now as the rasp becomes a bark and spittle flies from her lips onto Ruby’s cheek. ‘We work as a group; we don’t try to set ourselves apart. We’re loyal. We don’t thieve from each other. And we never, never talk about what we do and how we do it.’ She gives Ruby’s hair another yank – just to make certain she’s understood the magnitude of what’s happened. ‘You made out you were someone special. And you talked.’

‘I never. I never!’

Annie releases her, but as Ruby turns to plead, she slaps her hard across the face. The thick diamond rings meet her cheek and eyebrow and send her juddering into the table. Annie hauls her up roughly by the hair and then strikes her again and again, harder, palm and fist, palm and fist, until her face is a ball of pain and blood.

‘Go home, Ruby. Get out of my sight. I don’t want to look at you right now. Piss off back to Solly’s. Better still, piss off out of the Borough.’ She commands the whole room. ‘And no one, no one is to speak to this ungrateful little squealer unless I say so.’

Ruby puts one hand to her face, pressing an injured cheek, and another to the back of her neck, to check that she still has hair.

She won’t cry. She never cries. She clamps her teeth together only to stop herself from shouting back at Annie, screaming the Crown down. No good would come of that.