Then as the afternoon wore on, he took her to the cemetery. Dora’s grave was brown bare earth, the pink wreath Angel had paid for lying there on it, exposed to the cold wind. But it wasn’t to Dora’s grave that Donny led her. It was to another two.

‘My brother William,’ he said, pointing to the headstone. And there, beside it: ‘My mum,’ he said. ‘My dad’s still in a home. Losing them turned his mind.’ He pinned her with his dark eyes. ‘Your mum killed them.’

Angel’s mouth dropped open at that. ‘What?’

Angel remembered what Dora had told her on the night before her death. ‘What are you saying?’

He shrugged. ‘She caused their deaths. I’d have thought that was plain enough. William had a stupid schoolboy crush on her and her boyfriend took against it. Broke his legs to bits. Then William hanged himself and Mum took a dive off the church roof. So yes – Dora killed them. And she drove my dad to madness.’

Angel stared at him. He said all this so calmly, as if stating simple facts. Dora had been dippy, a bit wild, Angel knew that – but evil? No. Never. She felt a stab of desperate fear then as she stood there beside him. He wasn’t done yet. She could see that, clear as day. He’d finished Dora, but it wouldn’t end there. He would do for her, too.

Angel’s mind spun in tiny trapped circles. She had nothing of her own. She didn’t even have a job any more. She was his slave, and there was nothing she could do about it.

By the time they got back to the flat it was dark. Angel went straight into the box room that had once served as her bedroom, closing the door behind her. She wished there was a lock on it. Now, although there was still a single bed in there, and a wardrobe, the tiny room was set up and used mostly as her sewing room. Donny had brought the big oblong parcel in here at some stage and placed it in front of the machine. Angel stood behind the table with the parcel and her old Singer sewing machine on it and gazed out at the rain-sodden rooftops of London.

There might as well be bars on the window, she thought.

She could hear Donny out in the kitchenette, filling the kettle. Swallowing hard, gulping back an ever-increasing wave of panic, she picked up her tailoring scissors and cut through the string that tied the new bolt of fabric. Then she peeled back the brown paper, revealing what lay beneath. It was the softest, palest sky-blue silk and it would suit her colouring perfectly. Say what you like about Donny, he was still a man of taste. He was always beautifully turned out. And he expected his mistresses to be the same.

Angel ran a shaking hand over the coolness of the fabric.

‘So, do you like it?’ said his voice from right behind her.