Tommy smiled. ‘You always this suspicious?’

‘Pays to be.’

‘What did I tell you the very first time we met? Let them play silly buggers if they want, and hold stupid grudges and fight among themselves. All that business about your mum’s past and . . .’

‘What about it?’ she asked, curious.

Dora never spoke of the past. She cursed her family for abandoning her, yes: but she had never explained their reasons or how that had come about, and Angel had never asked. It was a sore subject for Dora, she felt that, knew it in her bones, so she left the subject alone.

‘Ah, nothing. Forget all that. You and me, we’re family. Cousins. You’re exactly what’s needed behind a bar to draw in the punters. That being the case, why wouldn’t I do you a favour?’ He stared at her set, closed face. ‘So, what do you say?’

Angel chewed it over. Then she said: ‘When does he want me to come in?’

Tommy’s smile widened to a grin. ‘How about tomorrow? Say, three?’

‘OK,’ said Angel, and he gave her his card with the club’s address on it.

For once, Angel couldn’t wait to get home. Even the sight of Dora languishing – as usual – on the couch with a quarter-full voddy bottle on the stained carpet beside her couldn’t squash her optimism.

‘Hello, my duck,’ said Dora when Angel came through the door.

‘Hello, Mum,’ said Angel, and went and kissed Dora’s cheek.

To her surprise, Dora reached up and grabbed her arm in a ferocious grip.

‘Ow!’ said Angel, wincing.

She was drawn down inches from Dora’s face, close enough to see the broken veins in her mother’s cheeks, close enough to smell her stale drinker’s breath and the odours of her unwashed body, and to stare into her hostile, bloodshot blue eyes.

‘Mum, what you doing?’ said Angel, straining to get away.

But Dora held on grimly. ‘Bit of a little whore, aintcha?’ she hissed at her daughter.

‘What . . . ?’

‘Don’t come the fucking innocent. He’s taking you out again tonight. He told me. What, you think you’re just for decoration, do you? Think he won’t want a pay-off?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘It’s a game of his, you fucking little fool.’ There was a flash of real anguish in Dora’s eyes. ‘He’s punished me for years, and now he’s found a new way to do it. He’s starting on you.’

Angel was shaking her head, trying to pull away. Punishing her? What the hell was Dora talking about? ‘You’re drunk,’ she said. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying, you’re off your head on the sauce, that’s your trouble.’

‘They say you tell the truth when you’ve had a few. You don’t gloss over stuff, you let it out. That’s what I’m doing.’

Angel gave an almighty wrench, yanking herself free of her mother’s grip. She backed off fast from the couch, stood there rubbing her bruised arm and staring down at Dora.