He unwinds the silk tie from the brass rail above her head and knots it around his neck, nodding at himself in the mirror. Ruby sits up in the bed, pulling the sheet against her warm skin, and watches him.

‘You’re taking a risk, leaving a thief alone in your house. I might walk off with the teaspoons.’

‘I’ll be disappointed if you don’t. Consider it a tip.’

He’s already left a pile of bank notes on the bedside table. A generous amount.

He sits on the bed and strokes her hair. ‘You know, if you’re in the mire, financially, there’s work here for a girl like you – and there are men downstairs who’ll pay far more than I have for a bit of fun. You could be sporting diamonds every night.’

Or feeding a cocaine habit like the dead-eyed, fluffy-headed creature she saw with Billy.

‘Think about it,’ he says again, tugging the sheet away from her chest and gazing down at her. ‘And maybe I’ll find you here waiting for me when I come home, eh? Ready to play some more?’

‘What time will that be?’

‘Around dawn.’ He checks his watch and smiles at her, taking her enquiry as agreement. ‘I’ll be imagining you in my bed while I’m away.’

She waits for him to leave and then cocoons herself in the sheets. The money is useful, but she has no intention of tying herself to a pimp; however charming he might be, she knows that’s what he is. He won’t be charming forever – not once he’s passed her around his friends for a ‘bit of fun’, and for a little less cash each time.

It will do her no harm to close her eyes for a while, but she’ll be gone long before dawn. And he might find his flat is missing more than a few silver teaspoons.

She wakes with a start. She had been on the edge of a dream – one that she cannot now recall – and aware of noises that were not part of it. Animals of some kind, screeching, whinnying, barking. And then a loud crack. She lies still, her heart racing.

She strains her ears. She can hear the dull thump of music in the club two floors below and some street sounds – men wandering home drunk as lords – but nothing more, nothing sinister or unusual. Just Soho noises.

She listens to the sound of her own breathing for a while and then switches on the lamp and swings herself out of bed, reaching for her handbag and her watch. It is ten past three – a long way off dawn, but time to be moving on. She presses the money he’s left into her bag and finds her clothes and shoes.