‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

Lil was gasping so hard she could barely get a word out. She slumped against Donny and looked back, behind her.

‘I think there’s someone . . .’ she started shakily.

Donny looked. There was a very tall man walking away from them, just going out into the sunlight at the other end of the underpass. Big man. Dark coat. Darkish hair. Nothing remarkable about him.

Lil’s head twitched back and her eyes met Donny’s. ‘I thought he was following me. I thought . . .’ I thought he was going to grab me.

Now the man was gone, out of sight.

Donny released Lil and said: ‘I think you’re letting your imagination run away with you.’

Lil made to speak, to say no, she’d been certain the man was going to do something. But she felt stupid now, standing here in the sunlight with this mean-eyed copper looking at her sideways. Another hysterical woman, that’s what he was thinking. She could see it in his face. She stiffened, straightened herself up.

‘I’m all right now,’ she said, shivering a little as she thought of those heavy, determined footsteps, gaining on her. She would hear them in her dreams, she knew. In her nightmares.

‘Lil,’ said Donny. ‘Look. I’m trying to find Dora. We need to bring her in. We think she may be in danger.’

Lil thought instantly of Dora’s letter; suddenly it felt like it was burning a hole in her pocket.

‘What sort of danger?’ she asked.

‘Bad. Frank Pargeter’s upset with her. He’s out to get her, Lil.’

Well let him, thought Lil. And instantly she felt ashamed. That thought had come out of her deepest, darkest hindbrain. Dora the Adored. The favoured one, the pretty one. All her life Lil had lived in the shadow of her youngest sister. Even at her wedding, when she’d been the bride, queen for the day, beautiful Dora had stolen the show as her bridesmaid. Lil was cut to the core over the injustice of it. She was the one who worked hard, made sure everything was done just as it should be. And did that get you anywhere, being like that? No fucking where at all was the answer to that question.

She was still stinging with resentment at the conversation with Mum, who’d been trying to foist bloody Dora, who could do no wrong, onto her. She loves her more than me, thought Lil. It was nothing but the truth. And it broke Lil’s heart.

But . . . could she really live with herself if something bad happened to Dora? If she let that oily toad of a gangster Frank get hold of her and do his worst? Dora was a cow, but she was also her sister.

‘Last I heard, she was at our Aunt Min’s place in Harrogate,’ she said.

‘I tried there. She’s moved on. No forwarding address. I searched all round the town, found her and lost her again on the way to York. Since then, nothing.’