So for Nula the evening didn’t get off to a flying start. She got dressed up and wondered why she was bothering. Charlie was going to be seen off at the door, and not by big blustering Jimmy but by Dad. She cringed when she heard the doorbell go at five to seven and stood in her room upstairs waiting to hear raised voices.

She waited.

Nothing happened.

Cautiously she went down the stairs and into the hall. There was laughter coming from the kitchen, where the family always gathered in the evenings. She walked along the hall, pushed open the kitchen door.

There was her mother, sitting at the table blushing like a girl and smiling up at Charlie Stone. Jimmy was loitering over by the fireplace, not quite scowling but arms crossed over his middle in a defensive posture while Charlie held Mum and even Dad in thrall.

‘I wondered where Nula got her looks from, and now I know. You have a lovely daughter, Mrs Perkins, you should be very proud.’

Nula watched Charlie in fascination. She hadn’t known he could be like this: charming, smiling, exuding this magnetic bonhomie that even seemed to be sucking her po-faced father into its orbit. All she had seen so far was the threat, the big-noise gangster. Here was another side to his character, and it amazed her.

He turned his head, still smiling, as she came into the room. ‘Nula!’ he exclaimed, eyeing her up and down. ‘Don’t you look the business.’

For once, Nula was almost prepared to believe him. She’d chosen a dusky-blue dress for the evening, and it suited her skin and hair to perfection. She’d applied make-up and even she knew that she looked pretty good. It wasn’t that artless, natural looking good that Jill always seemed to manage without even trying – no, Nula had to work at it. But she’d pass for OK.

She thought that Charlie looked good too, wearing a suit, a crisp white shirt and a tobacco-brown tie that matched his eyes. He looked . . . expensive, that was the word. He wasn’t a working-class loser like her father and her brother. Charlie Stone looked like a man on the way up.

He came over to where Nula was standing in the open doorway and then he did the most amazing thing: he took her hand, brought it to his lips and kissed it.

‘Doll, you look a million dollars,’ said Charlie, his eyes never once leaving hers. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’

19

That night was the start of something big.

It surprised them both, but within a few months they were going steady, and it was pretty much agreed that soon Nula was going to stop being plain Nula Perkins and start being Mrs Charlie Stone.