Later, wiping her nose on the stiff cuff of her sleeve, she will try to remember exactly what the customer had looked like and tell her story to her manager and several policemen. Over her head, the inspector will confirm to the manager that his store has been raided by a gang from Southwark. It will matter little to her that this gang is notorious – ‘the Forty Thieves’, they call themselves – she has never heard of them until now. A serious-faced young woman will record her words in a tiny black notebook, offering no words of sympathy as the shop girl gestures vaguely, red-eyed and sniffing, speaking of diamonds and film-star looks. The woman will lower her brows in a frown, tuck the notebook and pencil into her handbag and re-pin her hat. As she leaves, she will give the girl half a crown for her words – small compensation for the loss of her job. She will also give her, as an afterthought, a folded handkerchief which, by its very plainness, will seem so much at odds with the luxury on display.

2

2

Saturday evening

Ruby makes her way along Borough High Street as darkness falls. She passes the old timber-framed shops, set with angled lanterns that lean precariously from their fittings. The shops are crowded together, almost one on top of the other, as they have been since the days of Charles II, selling everything a person should want or need – sometimes in the same shop, according to the signs. She could, should she wish, buy a pint of tea for a penny at Shuttleworth’s, inspect the umbrella warehouse and then find elastic stockings at Chaplin’s.

None of these places sells the sort of goods she hankers after. Only Solly Palmer’s jewellery shop – where she lives and allegedly works – sells the stuff that sparkles, and for silks, satins and furs, she must visit a warehouse or travel over the river.

Behind the High Street lies a maze of streets and courtyards. The wall of the nearby lumber yard is so high that, even in the daytime, the sun fails to touch the melancholy, dark-bricked homes, and on a starless night, this part of the Borough is impenetrable to anyone who does not live here. The dwellings are flimsy and run-down but crammed so hard against one another that they have never yet collapsed. These tenements are stacked not with fancy goods, but with hundreds of dirty-faced children. They are nests and nurseries of criminality – although Ruby knows that even the children can be bought and sold as easily as a bag of trotters or a barrel of beer.

She walks without considering her surroundings. This is where she lives – where she’s always lived. But she’s imagining herself in a casino in Monte Carlo where everyone drinks champagne, just like in the pictures.