‘My doorman will keep an eye out,’ she tells me. ‘He loathes the hangman, who has seen off more than one or two of his own pals. And my Cornelius is a burly sort and keeps trouble away, so folk can get on with the business of gin-drinking. I will warn him to look out for you. It will cost you, mind. He will want a tip. But you will have the means to pay.’

‘Is it like whoring?’ I ponder, thinking of the prospect of making myself into a half-hanged curiosity that folk can touch and ask questions about.

‘Heavens, no, it will be much better paid and you can keep your drawers on,’ Aunt Jenever replies. ‘Come, untie your shawl and let’s have a look at this bruise.’

She stands up unsteadily and leads me over to a large, grubby mirror. I am glad I’ve had three gins. I’ve not seen myself since the River Inn and I look how I feel. My face is dirty and my bonnet askew, my hair a grease-slick. My shawl is a grubby shade of grey. But worst of all is the bruise. The rope has made a clear, wide line all the way around my neck and the bruise spreads above and below, up to my chin and my ears.

I wail.

‘Shush, shush, it will subside,’ Aunt Jenever says. ‘But you should gird your loins and make the most of it, before it does.’

So that is what I do.

Aunt Jenever sets me up in the other bed in her living quarters, which are one flight of steps above her shop and consist of two rooms, one where she sleeps off the gin, and the other where she takes a tenant when she sees fit. She is not a poor woman, nor particularly rich, nor particularly generous, for she wants a shilling a week for the rent, but I do not think her a schemer or a liar. And I have come to be an expert in those.

She makes her living from selling Mother’s Ruin and has no shame in it. She is industrious in her trips to the fruit market for juniper berries and blackberries, and labours in the tiny workshop at the back of the shop that she uses as her distillery. And I have come to a point in my life when I have seen a lot of what the world is about and have found out that there are some people who will pretend to be good, but really they are not. Aunt Jenever makes no pretence.

So now I have my own bed in my own room, but little time to lie in it and ruminate, for I need to make my rent.

Chapter Twenty-Five