In fact, Lulu did not particularly need to find work immediately: Mr. Goncharoff had left her with a severance pay that, while not lavish, would give her enough to live on for a few weeks at least, if she were careful, as Lulu was. But, partly through stubbornness, and partly in order to keep herself safely occupied until the academic year was under way without her, Lulu had decided to plunge straight into another job. Goncharoff’s Antiques had closed on a Friday afternoon; on the following Monday morning, she had started to work the day shift as a summer relief barmaid at the Crown & Sceptre, in Islington.

Despite the regality of its name, the Crown & Sceptre was not a prepossessing pub. It did not offer a garden with shady trees and flowers hanging romantically from baskets, like the Albion, where Lulu’s parents would sometimes stroll for a glass of wine on a light evening; it did not boast an attractive menu of organic foods simply but deliciously prepared, like the Barnesbury, where they would take themselves to dinner when neither could be bothered to cook. Summer positions in those pubs had long been taken by those luckier than Lulu, students and foreign visitors, who had applied early enough in the year to pick and choose their places of employment.

The Crown & Sceptre was a dank space at the unfashionable end of Upper Street, set between a dingy grocery and a chemist’s shop smelling of cheap perfume; the beer it served was thin, and the Tasty English Fayre boasted on its menu consisted of watery shepherd’s pie and questionable chicken curry, trundled into the kitchen daily already cooked in industrial-sized vats, and thrown into the microwave in individual portions, should any customer be unwary enough to order. The clients were few and depressed, sad men in fraying business suits who may, or may not, have been in employment, tight-curled elderly women exchanging medical histories between tuts of dismay and emphysemic coughs. It was the sort of place where a person would have to be desperate to accept employment; and Lulu, as Michelle the manager quickly made plain, was the sort of person they would have to be desperate to employ.

Michelle was a thin-faced, thin-lipped young woman, with dyed jet-black hair, and, at barely thirty, the beginnings of a frown line already discernible between her thinly plucked brows. She had disliked Lulu on sight, and her ill opinion had been confirmed when Lulu had mentioned that she had had previous experience serving behind the bar at her student union: Michelle did not approve of university graduates. Michelle, it quickly became plain, did not approve of anyone whom she perceived as coming from a more privileged background than her; and when she learned that Lulu lived in Belsize Park, and that her father traveled the world for his profession, then Lulu became irredeemably identified in her eyes as a spoilt rich girl who needed to be taught a lesson in life’s realities. Behind the bar at St. Andrew’s, Lulu had been known as being rather efficient; at the Crown & Sceptre, try as she might, her countertop was never cleaned sufficiently for Michelle, her glasses never arranged neatly enough, her beer never drawn fast enough. But the Crown & Sceptre was desperate for a relief barmaid, and so had hired Lulu until the end of September, although Michelle doubted whether she would last until then: Lulu’s sort, she knew, were not the type to honor their commitments.