A display catches her eye. Pretty paste jewellery, laid out in circles. Brooches, necklaces, rings. It’s nothing like the jewellery she took from that smart jeweller, but the way the shop assistants have laid it out makes it all shimmer brightly. They have set the pieces out on a table covered in dark blue velvet cloth under one of the vast chandeliers. They glint up at her as she passes, like bright stars against the night’s sky.

Clever.

She picks up a brooch, a crescent moon, like the one she so admired from Gloucester Road, the one Solly took from her and broke into pieces. She had wanted that brooch so much.

She slips the moon into her pocket and turns towards the exit.

Maggs will be waiting.

A hand clamps down on her shoulder, hard.

She twists to escape from whoever is behind her, but the hand holds her tightly and her arm is thrust up her back.

A man comes running. A woman is shouting from behind her. Another man speeds to assist.

She wrestles free, only to find herself grabbed again.

She struggles like an animal, cursing, shrieking murder, and at the edge of her blurring vision, she sees Florrie and Edith heading for the door.

She is pushed, without warning, against a counter, and more hands, men’s hands, invade her coat, under her skirts, feeling for the pockets and secret linings they know will be in there. They pull out scarves like magicians, along with the gloves and the single, crescent-shaped paste brooch, and lay them all on the counter next to her.

‘Hello, Ruby.’ A familiar voice at her back. She is permitted to turn and face him.

Inspector MacKenzie smiles brightly. ‘Fancy finding you here.’

‘Ah, shit.’

49

49

Four months later

Ruby stands outside the door of her apartment. She touches her hair, freshly cut.

She used to dream about this place – the whiteness of the walls, the softness of the bed – when she was lying in her stinking cell.

She licks her lips. Best not to think of it. Three months of her life given over to picking coir. She examines her nails for the coarse fibres from the ropes even now. She did this each evening in Holloway, meticulously, before the lights were turned out. It will be weeks before her hands recover. She clenches her fists to hide the battered tips of her fingers. She’ll need a new pair of gloves.

She has been out of prison for a week. The girls – and Solly – welcomed her back as they always welcome back Forties, like a war hero, a film star. She wears her imprisonment with honour, like the boys wear their medals, knowing that she has served the Forties well. She was, at least, lifting for them when she was caught, and not for herself.

For a week, she has sat in the Crown every night, regaining her old life.