The Forties make a habit of entering places like Selfridges or Debenham and Freebody as though they own the place. Dress to the nines and look like you have money to spend, Maggs always says, and no one will suspect that you’re there to do anything else. Ruby knows this is true. If you shuffle in looking like a pauper, then everyone’s watching, wondering why someone like you would be in the store, knowing that you can’t afford the goods on sale. Daisy is still mooning over Harry. No good will come of that – he’s banged up for five years – and she needs to walk tall and look like a lady. Especially in the store they’re raiding.

Pair by pair they turn into Wigmore Street and prepare to enter the vast white building that is Debenham and Freebody. Ruby gives a little shiver of excitement as she stares up at five gleaming floors of wonder. Windows glint in the dull afternoon, shimmering with light from inside. There must be hundreds of windows across the front of this building, all scrubbed and polished and showing none of the dust and dirt that has covered the whole of London during the war. Sculpted cherubs appear to fly about the portico, and above the grand doorway with its lacquered wooden doors stand two giant green-marbled columns. They are entering a temple, a hallowed place.

Florrie stifles a gasp as she tips her hat back to look up. Everyone looks up. Everyone’s heart beats a little faster the first time they come here. It’s not as exciting as Selfridges, of course, but it is beautiful and majestic.

It is one of Ruby’s favourite haunts, mostly because it is quieter than Selfridges. She’s even been known to pay for goods here. But not today.

They know what to do. They’ve had instructions from Maggs. They will remain in their pairs and operate on different floors, as usual. That way, if anyone is caught, the others can make their escape. Ruby gives Daisy a sharp poke between the shoulders as she passes, reminding her to stand up straight, before she and Edith saunter through the marble-clad entrance hall, still arm in arm, like two well-to-do young women out for a shopping expedition. They inhale the luxurious perfumes of Guerlain, Coty and Poiret that waft through the archway leading to the ground floor. They chatter about the cinema, about the picture they saw last week, as they ascend the wide staircase to the third floor, ostensibly to look at coats. The words are meaningless nonsense; they are communicating more by gesture and instinct, as only the Forties can.