There is nothing she can say or do that will change his mind. It is her father who has decided the matter. She might be the most brilliant writer in the world, a Shakespeare or Milton, and it would count for nothing. She neither gained the job nor lost it by anything that she did herself.

She stands and gives him a curt nod, unable to say anything more, not even a goodbye, for fear of screaming or sobbing.

She walks to her desk – to James Curran’s desk – and collects her spare pencils and notebooks into her handbag.

She does not say a word to anyone as she leaves, fixing her lips so tightly together that she imagines her jaw will set.

46

46

Saturday morning, later

Harriet cannot return home. She is furious with her father – humiliated by him as much as by Ralph. She stamps away from Kensington. She travels east, not looking where she is going, only turning over and over in her mind the wrongs that have been done to her. She passes through Hyde Park, not noticing the crocuses that are now springing up under the trees in vibrant dabs of colour, so dark is her mood. The charming streets of Mayfair, where she had planned her future only days ago, are now oppressive. Behind every doorway of every elegant mansion, she imagines secrets, affairs, corruption and scandal. Who can tell, from the polished façade, what lurks inside?

Only when she discovers that she is in Soho does she slow her pace. It looks different, somehow, from how it had appeared to her before. There is a griminess and depravity about it. A man falls from the doorway of a public house, nearly crashing into her, oblivious of her in his drunkenness. The streets that were brightly coloured by electrical lights in the nighttime and full of fresh possibility in the daytime, now seem grey and miserable in their degeneracy. How curious that she didn’t notice until now.

It is in this world that Ruby makes her existence. A wretched life.

She had tried not to think about Ruby over these last two days. She quickly failed in this, and so took to railing at her, in her own imagination, for stealing Ralph – for throwing herself, with all her obvious charms, at her fiancé. She has rehearsed feelings of resentment and jealousy because this is what she supposes she ought to feel.

But what she feels is sadness – grief, rather than betrayal. And, even now, she wants to know what has happened to Ruby. Wants to know that she is well. Safe. That is why she has come here. She is looking for Ruby.

She reaches the Angel and finds it closed. More than closed. It is chained and padlocked. A sign has been pinned to the door, saying that the club is closed until further notice. No other information is given. There is no Ruby. There is no one here at all.