‘Talk about gone to the bad,’ said June, her eyes sharp with spite as they swept over her sister. ‘It’s bloody true, ain’t it? You’re staying here, you’re being kept by that villain Frank Pargeter.’

‘Never you mind all that,’ said Dora.

Gawd, didn’t June look a mess. Her teeth were bad. And the limp she’d had from the rickets was still pronounced. For years as a kid she’d had to wear a built-up shoe and metal callipers on her left leg. Uncomfortably, Dora found herself thinking of those treats Mum had passed her way, the secret sips of milk, the covert extra egg – while June had got none. Hadn’t she heard somewhere that rickets was a bone disease, down to lack of proper food?

‘Well you couldn’t afford this place, could you? So it has to be some fella footing the bill,’ said June. ‘Lil told me she gave you money. But not enough for this. Is it that Frank feller? The nasty one everyone talks about?’

‘Look, what do you want?’ snapped Dora. ‘I’ve got things to do.’

‘Just to give you this,’ said June, handing over a brown envelope. ‘It came to the house. Dad opened it, then he saw it was addressed to you and spat on the floor. You can deny it all you like, but everyone knows what you’ve been getting up to with that Frank, so Dad sent me over here to hand it to you. It’s a VO.’

‘What the hell’s a VO?’ Dora took the envelope; it looked official. She pulled out the letter inside.

‘Christ, you really are a dumb blonde, aintcha?’ mocked June.

Dora looked from the letter to June, wide-eyed. ‘Fuck’s sake! It’s a prison visiting order.’

‘Yeah, seems like Dickie Cole wants to see you,’ said June. ‘The people you mix with, our Dor. You want to watch yourself, you really do.’

Dora stared at the official letter in her hand, hardly hearing June’s words. Dickie! She missed him. He was so handsome, so virile. Nothing like Frank. He’d been her first real romance. He’d made her heart pick up a beat every time she saw him. She hated the thought of him there, in prison. It would be for years, the best years of his life. And now he wanted to see her.

‘I don’t suppose you’ll go, will you?’ June was saying. ‘Not now you’ve got the other one.’

‘Of course not,’ said Dora.

25

Dora had never been anywhere near a prison before. Her folks, however poor, were honest. The nearest any of them had ever come to dodgy stuff was Dad getting Dickie to nick the meat for Lil’s reception, then paying him a knock-down price for it. But for all of that evening, when she stood up in front of a microphone for the first time, and sang sweetly, and relished the applause of the well-to-do crowd, she couldn’t get the VO from Dickie out of her mind.

She couldn’t imagine what it felt like, being locked away. Having literally no freedom. Frank had told her that the coppers had busted into Dickie’s flat at five in the morning and hauled him out to the car in handcuffs. He must have been terrified. He’d been taken to Scotland Yard and then on to Brixton jail, and he’d be held there on remand until the preliminary hearing at Old Street magistrates’ court two months away to see if the matter would proceed further. Which of course it would, if the partygoers down there in the basement flat were willing to testify that Dickie was the guilty one, not Frank.