Harriet, now no longer noticing nor caring what other people think, is in shock.

She can smell that fragrance again. Mitsouko. Unmistakable.

Ralph had smelled of Ruby the other morning. He had reeked of her. She understands why, now.

‘How dare you?’ It’s all that she can think to say. ‘How dare you!’

‘I don’t know.’ Ruby gives the smallest shake of her head, as if nothing really matters to her, and slips the watch back into her pocket. ‘I never know how I do dare. I just do.’

She makes to pass Harriet, but the movement is awkward. Harriet reaches out, and, for a moment, the girls grab and grapple with one another. Harriet takes note of the feeling of Ruby’s arms – their leanness, hidden from view underneath the fabric of the coat. She is thin. Quite thin. Not Ralph’s sort at all.

They both know that Harriet will not fight her in the middle of Selfridges. Ruby is as wiry as a cat, a creature of the gutter, born into fighting. She brushes Harriet aside with relative ease and turns away, walking to the door, then out onto Oxford Street, her head high.

Harriet puts a hand to her mouth to prevent the wail that is rising in her chest. Ralph and Ruby. She cannot believe it – does not want to believe it. And yet, she knows that Ruby is telling the truth. The truth is Ruby’s revenge for her article.

And everything she believed she understood about Ruby, and about Ralph, is wrong. False. As much an imitation as the strands of pearls in her fingers, necklaces she has plucked from the stand and is twisting mindlessly in her agitation.

Her life is a sham, all of it.

She stumbles to the door, needing air, needing to be away from this place, from the glittering, shimmering, sweetly scented world. She needs to walk, to think, to work out what she will say to Ralph, how she will confront him. How she might begin to tell him that she knows he paid to spend the night with Ruby. How insulted she has been. She will tell him that she feels sick when she thinks of it.

She will not say that she is ashamed of the feeling that rises within her when she imagines them together.

She pushes the pearls into her coat pocket and stands on the pavement. She takes a deep breath. Even the putrid air of Oxford Street is now preferable to the cloying perfume of the cosmetics hall.

She will return home. Tell her parents that she no longer wishes to marry Ralph. No. She will speak to Ralph first. Have it out with him. Break off the engagement.

Oh, but Ruby. Ruby.