‘I’m sorry. Yes, I would like that, I would like some help. It’s kind of you to offer.’

The smile returns, along with the softer gleam in his eye.

‘Happy to help. Once you’ve written your piece about the jewellery habits in Chelsea and Kensington, I’ll take a look at it. Make some comments and help you craft it.’

He turns to walk away but stops and turns back to her, head cocked to one side.

‘By the way, the car they used, to escape from Enderby’s, what model did you say it was?’

It was a Vauxhall. She gave the details – including the registration number – to the police officer. She didn’t think to mention it in her piece for Mr Pickford.

‘I don’t know. It looked like any other motor car to me.’ She is still too cross with him to share the information.

He stares at her for a moment, unblinking. Then he smiles again. ‘That’s a shame. It doesn’t matter.’ He walks away.

Harriet takes a deep breath, picks up her handbag and hat and reaches for the coat she has folded over the back of her chair. She says nothing to any of the men as she leaves the room and makes no comment to the porter in the reception hall as he holds open the front door.

It is only when she reaches the pavement that she exhales.

It was a white lie – an omission – but she is unused to lying.

And she did it out of spite.

She paces the streets for ten minutes, walking briskly away from the newspaper offices, stamping out her annoyance with Jimmy – and her frustration with herself. The morning air is still damp. It might rain again before the day is over. Her umbrella is propped up next to her desk, but she will not return for it.

The sensation of being squeezed, crushed about the ribs, begins to subside as she paces, until she finally feels ready to return to the typewriter and consider a piece about jewellery fashions. She knows the sort of thing Pickford will expect: ‘Engagement Rings for the New Decade’; why London jewellers are following Paris; the influence of American film stars on the choices women make. Light, frothy stuff. Nothing to upset or tax the minds of the Kensington and Chelsea ladies – people like her mother.

She really should not think about her mother. She turns down another street, travelling further away from the office again, stamping harder.

There are women, heroic women, writing serious articles for newspapers far superior to the Kensington Gazette. Women write about war, prison conditions and starving children in blockaded Europe. They have been foreign correspondents and literary reviewers. There is even a society for women journalists. If she could only push a foot through a door, the right door, she could…

She could what?