Solomon Palmer is the closest thing Ruby has to a father. He’s not protective, but he’s trained her, taught her, given her a roof over her head and never asked too many questions. He has never married. He says he never had time for a wife. But Ruby has seen him watching the men – watching them like she watches them. She doesn’t ask too many questions, either. Not even all those years ago, when she was small, when he would slip out at night and return the next morning smelling of someone else.

Ruby doesn’t answer immediately. The fried bread is too good. She cuts neat portions and dips them in the gleaming yolk.

‘He’s not going to marry me, Solly, because I’m not the marrying kind, am I? He’ll want someone like his sister, at home, minding the pub, having his babies. Edith Lennox, probably. I’m the one he goes raiding with. I’m more of a smash-and-grab sort.’

‘And this doesn’t bother you?’

She shakes her head.

He pulls the chair closer to the table, sits down and tries to gauge the reality. ‘You don’t worry about what that makes you? What people will say about you?’

Ruby lays down her fork.

‘I’ve never worried about what people say about me, Solly. I’ve only worried about being stuck in prison or stuck in a bad marriage. I can see too many of those around here.’ She jerks her head towards the shared backyard. ‘Women squashed into tiny houses with hundreds of kids, married to a man who spends his money on the horses and his winnings on beer and thumps his wife if she complains. Pretty much like prison, if you ask me. That’s not what I want.’

‘What do you want?’

He’s always assumed that she will fall into the same life as every other woman in the Forty Thieves: that she’ll stick with one of the Elephant Boys, marry and raise a family. It’s not the life he chose for himself, but they both know it’s the usual pattern, what’s expected. The younger women do most of the hoisting then, when they’re older and saddled with kids, they help with the distribution and sorting of goods. Or, like Maggs, they train up the younger girls and oversee operations. Annie Richmond is different. She’s well over twenty-five, and although she’s been stepping out with Frederick Moss for a while, she’s in no hurry to marry. She’s too busy being Queen of the Thieves to settle into the usual life. It’s what Ruby most admires in her. But it also means that Annie won’t give up her crown to Ruby just yet – if ever.

‘I don’t know.’ She mops up the yolk with the bread.

‘No plans?’

‘No.’