Miss Fox did know, but she also knew that Kitty would have earned at least ten times that amount the evening before.

‘I’m more than happy with this,’ Kitty said, hoping to prevent an argument between the two women. She had taken the five shillings for Arthur’s mother from the money that Sunday had given her when she left Treetops, but now she would be able to put it back. Sunday had asked her to keep that as an emergency fund and that was exactly what she intended to do.

Sometimes she wondered again at the relationship between Miss Fox and her mother. Miss Fox didn’t talk to Ruby as one would expect a maid to speak to her mistress, but then as Cook had told her one day when she had commented on it, the woman had been with Ruby for years.

Scraping her chair back from the table, she yawned then excused herself and went up to her room. It had been a very long day, one way or another, after a very long night and all she wanted to do now was sleep.

Over in Arthur’s house in Pimlico, Maggie was preparing to sleep in a room very different to Kitty’s. Arthur’s mother, Clemency, had welcomed Maggie when her son explained the situation, even before he had given her the money for Maggie’s keep. Mrs Partridge might not have much herself but she was always willing to help those worse off, and from the moment she set eyes on Maggie she sensed that here was a very troubled young woman.

‘You’ll ’ave to share a bed wiv my girls, an’ I’ve no doubt it won’t be as posh as what yer used to, but yer welcome, luvvie,’ she told her, and Maggie was grateful for her kindness. She had shared the family’s meal with them – a thin stew of some sort with lumps of meat which were rather gristly – and then she had shared their fireside as they all chatted about what they’d done that day. The house was a tiny terraced two-up two-down in a grimy little courtyard that was bulging at the seams with bodies, and yet within minutes of being there Maggie felt herself beginning to relax. There was no standing on ceremony here, no strict regimes to follow as there had been at The Gables. Thank God she had bumped into Kitty when she had, or goodness knows what might have happened to her. She’d been at the end of her tether. Arthur’s brothers and sisters ranged in age from a toddler to some older children but the banter between them was pleasant to behold.

After the meal, Maggie helped Mrs Partridge clear the table and wash up in the deep stone sink.

‘I know this ain’t what yer used to,’ the woman apologised, for she sensed that Maggie had come from good stock and was upper class. ‘And it ain’t as clean as it could be neither, but it’s hard with so many of us in the ’ouse to keep on top of it all. I take in washin’ an’ ironin’ to ’elp make ends meet, so there never seems to be enough hours in the day. My Bert works as a wherryman – when he ain’t in the pub, that is!’ She snorted with laughter. ‘But he ain’t got a bad ’eart, not really.’