‘Yes. I’m writing a piece about them. They intrigue me.’ Harriet spoons sugar into her teacup at the breakfast table.

Isabel frowns – at the sugar and at the reminder of her daughter’s desire to work in a newspaper office. ‘I don’t see why a group of criminal women would be of any interest to anybody. And they really should not be written about.’

‘Why not? It would make a good article for the Gazette. I’ve decided to write a feature about them, their lives, why they steal –’

‘They shouldn’t be given any attention. They should be in prison. Or at home, looking after their children. Not so much sugar, Harriet. You’re getting married in a few months and Ralph won’t want you spilling out of your dress.’

Harriet bites her lip. She rather imagines that Ralph would be delighted if she spilled out of her dress, but her mother doesn’t need to hear that.

‘They are real women, Mummy. Some of them do have children, but they all look after one another, better than a trade union, even.’

‘Nonsense,’ Gerald grunts from behind the newspaper. ‘Don’t make them out to be saintly matrons. Those who aren’t thieving themselves are living off the criminal activity of the men they associate with.’

‘Well, none of them has much money, Daddy.’ She takes a careful sip of her tea. ‘They don’t steal because they want the items per se, they sell them on, so that they can eat and pay the rent. They are desperate people, some of them.’

Gerald groans, lowering the newspaper. ‘Dear God, must I be lectured over the breakfast table? This is nearly as bad as when you were fired up by the Pankhurst women.’

‘I’m not lecturing. I am simply saying that we should ask why the women steal in the first place –’

‘They steal because they want to have the sort of fancy goods you or I might have, without bothering to purchase them,’ Isabel snaps. ‘It has nothing to do with paying the rent.’

‘By the way, I ought to have asked before, is Robert Pickford content for you to continue at the Gazette?’ Gerald lays down his newspaper and reaches for the marmalade jar. ‘Knowing that you’ll be married soon? You’re sitting waving that enormous diamond around.’

‘Quite content.’ Harriet returns to her tea, avoiding her father’s eye. ‘But I won’t let the Forty Thieves go, you know,’ she says finally, with quiet conviction. ‘I’m going into the office this morning to write about them.’

Gerald shakes his head and begins to spread marmalade on thin slices of white toast.