She opens the small tea caddy on the table that serves as her jewellery box and plucks out her treasures. These are hers – really hers – items that she has paid for or stolen for herself, rather than borrowed from Solly or Maggs for a job. She lays out a pearl necklace, three pairs of earrings and two brooches on her pillow and contemplates them for a moment in the waning light of the gas lamp. She then drops them back into the tin. She lifts the mattress and stretches her arm to find the roll of bank notes, counting them out twice before re-rolling them and shoving them back as far as she can reach. Money that she keeps, just in case.

She is twenty quid lighter than she should have been. She scowls, remembering the way Annie Richmond patted that bloody handbag.

Bang, bang, bang. The sudden loud noise makes her jump.

Downstairs, round the back of the shop. Someone is in the yard, knocking at the back door, furiously, as if they’re going to break it down. She rushes into the kitchen, crashing into Solly, clad in his ancient night shirt.

‘What in the name of God…?’

Solly hauls up the window. Ruby rushes to his side, grabbing the thick stick they keep for protection. If someone is trying to raid the shop, it’s better if two of them are there, and she will be better at wielding the stick than Solly.

It’s nearly pitch-black darkness, drizzling with rain, almost too impenetrable to see anything, but they make out the shape of a man standing in the yard. Even if it were impossible to see him, they could still hear him – he is continuously banging the palms of his hands on the back door. He stares up at the window, the clouds part, and they catch a glimpse of his face in the thin moonlight.

‘Billy!’

‘Let me in, would you? Quick. It’s pissing down out here.’

Ruby scrambles away from the window and runs down the stairs to let him in.

She has barely opened the door for him before he slams it shut again and bolts it, familiar enough with the mechanism of the lock. He grabs her hand and pulls her into the shop, away from the door.

‘Billy, what’s going on?’ Ruby can feel the energy fizzing in him, the throb of violence, fear and aggression in the wet clasp of his hand.

He doesn’t answer; he’s still breathing hard. He propels her back the way she’s come, up the stairs to the flat, until the two of them tumble into the kitchen.

‘Away from that window,’ Billy gasps at Solly. ‘Pull the curtain as well.’

They never pull the curtain. Solly fumbles with the fabric.