‘I’ve got some business to attend to first.’ He picks at a well-scrubbed fingernail, running another nail under it to clean out imagined grime.

‘What business? Can I come?’

‘No. I told you, this has nothing to do with you.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Leave it, Ruby.’ He gives his sister a curt nod before walking off, out of the pub.

Clara watches him disappear through the door, wearing the strained expression of a woman who has lost too many men to violence.

‘Where’s he going, Clara?’ Ruby asks. ‘He won’t say.’

Clara shakes her head. ‘He wouldn’t tell me either.’ She wipes the bar with a damp cloth. ‘I expect he’s acting for Freddy Moss.’

Ruby returns to her abandoned glass and sits considering its contents as the conversation grows more light-hearted again. Annie, like Ruby, has decided that Alice will, at least, have some peace in Holloway. She’s been there before, so she might find herself inside for four or five months. But she will be away from George.

‘Food’s not so bad, as I recall,’ Maggs agrees. ‘She won’t starve. And she can pick up some useful information while she’s there.’

The floor is sticky under Ruby’s feet.

She could spend her whole life sitting in the Crown, waiting for Billy or waiting for Annie Richmond to tell her what to do and where to go. She could spend the rest of her days living in her small room at Solly’s, tidying up his shop, hiding his stolen goods and shipping them to Ray. Eventually, the coppers will catch up with her and she’ll take her turn in Holloway for a month or two, just like Alice.

The future, like the gin, is beginning to sour. Her shoulder still aches from where Maggs wrenched it earlier.

She closes her eyes, listening to the Forties chatting and cackling, trying to lose herself in her dreams, in a world where she is living on her wits, picking up jewels, dazzling with life.

She opens her eyes and makes a point of yawning.

‘I’d better go back to Solly,’ she says. ‘Help him close up. I could do with an early night.’

Maggs nods her approval. ‘Goodnight, Ruby. You did well today, with the letters and with the cash you lifted. Pay day on Saturday, don’t forget.’

‘I never forget pay day.’

Annie pats her handbag. She doesn’t believe in banks. She doesn’t leave the money in her house either. No one on her street would ever take it, but her brothers would happily borrow from the Forties’ fund if they could get their hands on it, so Ruby imagines Annie takes the bag to bed with her and uses it as a pillow.

‘It’s all here,’ Annie says. ‘Even the score that Maggs prised out of you.’