‘What prisoner?’ the man demanded of her. He clasped a pen in his fist.

‘Milli Nimrod,’ Alice said. She spoke in a low voice, wanting no one else to hear her sister’s name spoken in such a place, though what difference it made she did not know. ‘Millicent.’

The clerk wrote this down with a laborious hand, his pen scratching audibly on the thick parchment of his ledger.

Another man appeared, more senior perhaps, for he looked over the man’s shoulder at what he had written and swore at him and pulled at the man’s arm to drag him away. Alice was left to wait, but it was not long before a door was unlocked and the sorry little crowd shuffled through to another place. Alice attempted to follow but the guard barred her way. He locked the door and leaned against it and looked at her. Now the hall was empty, just herself and him.

And suddenly Alice was frightened.

The guard pushed himself up off the door and his eyes did not leave her face. He took a step towards her and his gaze slid slowly over her. The smell in the small room had changed subtly. There was an acrid smell. The smell of fear. Her own fear. Alice kept her eyes on the man’s face, not for a moment leaving it, but another part of her, the part that had grown up on these streets, that had lived all those years in a room with Mr Purley, darted left and right about the small room, assessing it, taking in the two locked doors, the pen that the clerk had used and had left on the desk—was it within her reach?—and the walls themselves, thick and solid enough that a head bashed against it would render a man insensible for a time. She had nothing on her person save for the letter from the woman, Mrs Flowers, and her tram ticket. The ticket fluttered now to the floor.

The guard had come no closer; he appeared to be waiting. There would be others then, not just one. Alice felt the panic rising in her. When the two guards who had left reappeared she braced herself, heard her own breathing, quick, jagged. Her fingers closed into fists.

One of the guards put his head through the hole in the wall and indicated to her. ‘You! Come here.’

She did not move.

He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’ He consulted the ledger. Looked up. The other guard stood at his shoulder, ignoring his colleague and watching her, studying her it seemed. The first one spoke again. ‘Millicent Nimrod, was it?’

Alice waited, then nodded.

‘Deceased,’ he said, closing the ledger with a snap.

For a time no one spoke. None of the guards moved. They just watched her, in a detached way; curious, it seemed. And slightly amused.

‘No,’ said Alice, shaking her head. ‘She is here, my sister. Milli.’