I headed towards my old rooms, though with little hope of finding them available. Sure enough, they’d been taken. I’d been away three weeks and paid enough rent to last the month, but no one here would care about the whys and wherefores of that. The woman who answered my knock sent me packing and I didn’t have enough about me to argue the toss with her. Tomorrow I would reclaim them but for now I needed a bed for the night. It was getting on for four o’clock, and soon all the best lodgings would be taken. I paused for a moment, unsure what to do. I needed to make a decision quick. Only the brave or stupid would hang around dressed like I was. That they wouldn’t know what to make of me might buy me some time, but likely they’d assume I was new here, someone to be taken advantage of. Now my room was gone, there was only one place left that I could hope for an undisturbed night, but I had to get there quickly.

Clarke Street was the Mayfair of St Giles. You needed money for a place there but it came with the knowledge that you most likely wouldn’t be robbed while you slept. There were no guarantees, of course, but I wanted to make sure that when I woke up the next day, I still had all the same possessions as when I’d closed my eyes. Cold as it was, it’d be no bad thing to sleep in my clothes. Eustace and I had always planned to live on Clarke Street. That’s when I thought I’d stay in St Giles forever, but since he was gone, and Mrs Bradley too, I knew the best thing for me would be to leave and start again, away from all the memories.

I made my way through the Rookery, dodging the deeper puddles of filth and keeping my eyes down. Though it would soon be teatime, there were still children out, sitting on front steps, lurking in doorways. I doubted many had parents to call them inside and, if they did, there was no cosy room awaiting them, no meal ready on the table.

I’d been lucky. Mrs Bradley had kept her word to my mother and done her best by me. There wasn’t much, but whatever she had she shared, and she’d instilled in me a love of music and Shakespeare too, the things she had enjoyed with her aristocratic lover until she’d become pregnant and he’d thrown her out. I thought of her now. Her kind face and the rings she wore on almost every finger. Paste jewels, I realised now. With the money I’d made as the Great Amazonia I could have bought her something nicer. Not a diamond, nor even a ruby, but a gold locket, with a miniature of Eustace inside.