Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim
- Norah Ephron

PROLOGUE

NELL

Benidorm, Spain, 1960

Let’s be frank.

Some people would give anything to escape the grey skies of London town for a carefree life in the sun.

But, looking back, we’d never had it so good.

They say crime doesn’t pay; well, they’d certainly never spent time on my manor in the fifties.

I rarely went out without a grand in my handbag, and that was just fun money – the spoils of my days going shopping with my gang, the Forty Thieves.

Business was booming and hoisting, as we professionals like to call shoplifting, was in its heyday. Now, you might look down your nose at us, but we were more than common thieves, and any woman worth their salt in London knew she could earn a pretty penny from it. My girls out-earned most blokes doing mugs’ jobs ten to one, but you had to learn the skill, like an apprentice, practising every day. There were risks, and the price you paid for getting caught was harsh, especially if you’d been up before the beak before.

As the leader, let’s just say I was pretty choosy about who I let into the gang. I’d learned from the mistakes of the Queen who went before me.

So, I was very careful about who I trusted. If anyone was going to be stabbing someone in the back, let’s just say I’d be holding the knife, not getting it between my shoulder blades.

But mostly, we were all too happy in those days to worry about grasses and snitches, or having our collars felt by the long arm of the law, or ending up in Holloway for a stretch. Rationing was over, clothing coupons had been chucked in the dustbin, and there was so much stuff crammed on to the rails that store managers could barely keep tally of their stock. My light-fingered lot had a field day. Factory girls and secretaries, flush with cash on their lunch breaks, loved nothing more than to try on half a dozen outfits, and we joined them, blending in, liberating beautiful dresses to allow them to be bought for a fairer price in the pubs and back alleys of South London.

Some of the bigger stores got wise to us, and so I branched out into disguises to liven things up – prim little hats, horn-rimmed glasses, wigs. I could give the costume department at most theatres in Drury Lane a run for their money with the stuff I had stashed at my place in Queen’s Buildings. I liked to keep the cozzers guessing, too. The wanted section of the Police Gazette was stuffed with likenesses of notorious shoplifters: brunettes, blondes, sweet, sassy. Most of them were me.

When petrol rationing finally came to an end after the war, I got a bit more enterprising about our sprees. I learned to drive, and I insisted my girls did the same. Gone were the days when we had to rely on a fella to take us everywhere and be our getaway driver, like they used to do. The shops beyond London became our playground. Teams of us took trips to other cities, as far afield as Birmingham or Manchester, or even down to the seaside, where the sleepy shop assistants weren’t wise to our ruses.

They weren’t expecting bag swaps or clouting, which is how we shoved the goods we wanted to nick down our shoplifter’s bloomers. They had elastic at the knee, to stop things falling out on the floor and giving the game away. The world was changing around us, but some tried and tested methods were the very foundation of the gang, and our ridiculous bloomers were part of the uniform. Ditching my drawers would be like a cozzer going out without his hat.

Brighton was a place fit for a queen. I loved the fresh sea breezes and the blustery pier, and it gave me a taste not just for fish and chips but for antique jewellery – the kind you found in those little shops nestling up the Lanes. If it was small and sparkly it was so easy to pop into your pocket, shove up your sleeve, or even tuck under your hat when the assistant’s back was turned. That made for a perfect day out.

I liked those trips most of all because it felt as if we were having an old-fashioned beano, like they had before the war. All that was missing was the charabanc and a crate of beer in the back.

At night, there was nowhere better to relax with a drink to toast our success than my Soho club, Rubies, where gangsters rubbed shoulders with would-be film stars, and aristos with fat wallets splurged on champagne with good-time girls. What a rum bunch we were. I should have known then that it was going to lead to trouble.

Back then, I saw running my club as a nice little earner, a bit of security for the future. I loved singing and I’d always dreamed of owning my own place, and everyone agreed I’d made a great job of it.

Maybe I was cocky, but I thought I could have it all.

I was riding high as Queen of the Forty Thieves and my fella, Jimmy the Razor, was King of Soho. We had a little princess safely tucked up at home while we did our villainy, so our family was complete.

It was the perfect life for thieves like us, but happy endings only happen in fairy tales, don’t they?

These days, I wonder if things could have worked out differently.

But as the old saying goes: If if and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no work for tinker’s hands.

I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, and I spend almost every afternoon at the seaside now, under the blazing Spanish sun. There are no cooling breezes, no seagulls and no fish and chips served up in old newspapers. The days roll into one another and I find myself gazing at the turquoise waves and dreaming about the life I left behind.

The late afternoon sunlight dapples the water and I watch the blond-haired little boy running along the beach towards me.

‘Come on, Mum!’ he yells. ‘Play with me!’

I smile and walk towards him, catching him and spinning him in the air, as he squints at me. He plants a kiss on my cheek, laughing in a way that reminds me so much of his dad.

Spain is paradise, I suppose.

But I’m a long way from home.

And the way things are, I can never go back.

Chapter One

ZOE

Limehouse, London, January 1957

It’s fair to say that I owe my life to a German bomb.

If it hadn’t been for the Luftwaffe doing their worst in the East End, smashing all the houses in the next street to smithereens, my mother might not have been terrified enough to send me to the countryside with the other evacuee kids.

And then I might never have known that I wasn’t born to be poor.

I was just a tiny scrap of a thing, with a cardboard label tied to my dirty coat and my threadbare teddy tucked under my arm, when my mother took me to Paddington Station after the shock of the first attack in the Blitz. My whole world had been shoved into a battered little case, which I clasped in my hand as I struggled to keep up with her. My few belongings – a hairbrush, a set of holey socks, a worn pinafore and an old toothbrush – rattled around inside it as she dragged me along beside her.

There were tearful hugs on the platform all around us, but Mum just shoved me up the steps into the waiting carriage. As the train drew away in a cloud of steam, there were howls of anguish from the other parents, but I only just caught sight of her departing back. She was off, sharpish, because the pub was opening soon and she didn’t want to miss her slot at the bar, where a fella might buy her a drink.

My dad was away at sea and because of me, Mum didn’t have to volunteer for war work, and so her days were spent gossiping on the front step rather than cleaning it – or scolding me for getting under her feet. My ears rang from being clobbered so often. Now, at last, she was free from the trouble of pretending to care for me, and I had half a chance of making it to adulthood without being deafened by her beatings.

Two little girls next to me in the carriage clung to each other and sobbed their hearts out. I sat and stared out of the window in wonder at the green fields filled with cows and sheep. Until then, the only greenery I’d seen was the cabbages stacked in boxes outside the corner shop. This beautiful countryside whizzing by me was a world away from the cobbled streets of Limehouse, and our basement rooms in a Victorian tenement, where the walls were paper-thin, and the damp seeped into every pore, coating everything in cold and misery.

The train journey went on for hours, but I was happy as a lark, with a jam sarnie handed out by a kindly woman in the smartest suit I had ever laid eyes on. Mum’s clothes were all second-hand from the market, faded, or torn where she’d had a barney with Dad. They had that funny smell about them, too. Other people’s clothes were musty and the disappointment of their lives hung around Mum’s shoulders, making her even more miserable and difficult.

My mother was nothing like this woman before me on the train. I found myself staring at her polished shoes, wondering how she got them so shiny. I was sad when she marched us out of the carriage at a little station in deepest Devon, but I needn’t have worried, because I went straight into the arms of a kindly farmer’s wife who treated me as if I were her most precious dolly.

I was used to being put to bed in my knickers at our house, in a freezing back room with a pillow like a rock and bedbugs for company, but suddenly I found myself dressed in a beautifully embroidered nightgown, tucked up like a little princess under the softest quilt in a bedroom overlooking a walled garden. Mum always moaned that my long ginger hair was a bleeding nightmare because it was so thick and unruly and hung like rats’ tails. I screamed every time she tried to get at it with the brush.

Now it was washed by caring hands, gently combed and plaited; my old clothes were thrown away without comment and replaced with cosy knitted jumpers, flannelette liberty bodices and smart pinafores. I’d never seen clothes like them, not to mention my own pair of brand-new shiny shoes for the village school and stout walking boots for playtime. It didn’t matter to me that some of them had come second-hand from the posh kids up at the manor house. Winter brought mittens and woollen stockings rather than freezing fingers, chilblains and blotchy legs like corned beef. The farm was full of excitement, with animals to play with and the smell of pies cooking on the range. I was in heaven.

My schoolteacher, Mrs Mills, took quite a shine to me and I was invited to tea at her neat cottage most evenings after school. There, by the warmth of the fireside, she taught me to read. On Saturdays, she ran dance classes at the village hall and I took my first, tentative steps into a world which made me feel alive. It was as if I was born to dance. My limbs felt light, and I practically radiated happiness, like a little sunbeam, as I threw myself into those lessons with gusto.

Mrs Mills could be terrifying to the other girls from the village, peering over her half-moon glasses at them or rapping them on the backs of their legs with her ruler when they got their steps wrong. But with me, she was kind and gentle, as if she knew that I was a little flower trying to grow up between the paving cracks in London. All I needed was care and attention, and she lavished that on me. We learned country dancing, the waltz, the foxtrot and how to curtsey like young ladies.

‘Oh, I ain’t got it right, miss!’ I’d cry when I faltered.

‘Oh no, not ain’t, Zoe,’ she’d say, softly. ‘It’s isn’t. There’s a good girl.’

Those four years were the happiest of my life, and when the war ended, I must have been the only person who went round looking as if someone had died.

The village tea party for VE Day was a huge affair, with a table stuffed full of buns, cakes and treats for all the children, but I could barely eat a bite. I knew what was coming, with a sense of doom that took away my appetite for life: the East End of London and Mum.

Victory had made it inevitable. Nothing could save me. Not even Mrs Mills and her promises to write to me often.

I was going home.

Mum was there to greet me as I stepped off the train at Paddington. I had grown into a strapping, healthy, country girl, fed on the cream of Devon cows and nurtured with kindness. She was raddled with drink, smaller and bonier than I had remembered, with two high-coloured patches of rouge on her cheeks.

‘Hello, Mother,’ I said, reaching out to her, with a brown paper parcel containing gifts of home-made cakes and jam from the farm. ‘How do you do?’

She snatched the parcel with one hand and pulled the ribbon from my hair with the other, bringing tears to my eyes.

‘Oh, Miss Hoity-toity! Don’t worry, I’ll soon knock that out of you.’

I caught my breath as we made our way to the tram, looking at bombed-out buildings, filthy pavements and miserable hordes, walking with their gas masks slung in cartons over their shoulders, as if they weighed a ton.

Limehouse welcomed me with spit in the eye from the grubby rascals who careered around on planks of wood with stolen pram wheels attached and shouts of ‘Wotcha, ginger nut!’ It was a far cry from ring-a-roses on the village green.

They started calling me ‘Posh Zoe’ to mock me and so I lived up to it, walking to and from school with my nose in the air. Throughout the rest of my school years, my beautiful cardigans from Devon grew smaller and smaller but I refused to give them up, even though they sat inches above my midriff. My woollen stockings were threadbare and my skirt barely covered my backside. But my clothes were a reminder of the life I’d lived before – the life I was meant to have, surrounded by beauty and kindness and nice things, rather than fly-blown ceilings, dog shit and bus tickets.

My pink satin ribbons were my most prized possession. I insisted on wearing them in my hair even though, as the years passed, they blackened with the filth of the East End. I couldn’t let them out of my sight to wash them and hang them on the line, or Mum, the spiteful cow, would have thrown them on the fire. She delighted in telling me so, taunting me in one of her toothless rants. She was dropping her knickers as often as her aitches with anything that had a pulse, in order to buy the booze she needed to numb the pain of her pathetic life, because Dad had never come home from the navy. He was too busy getting his leg over with a woman he’d met in Southampton. Mum’s health had suffered and every blow she struck me – and there were quite a few – only made my accent grow even more plummy, just to wind her up.

By the time I was fifteen, they were calling me Mad Zoe in our street, because although I spoke like the queen, I had developed a mean right hook for anyone foolish enough to cross my path. The other children whispered about me and called me names, but I cared not a jot. I didn’t have any friends because I didn’t want any. What did I have in common with these cockney ruffians?

One day, not long after my sixteenth birthday, just after New Year’s Eve, Mum announced she was going into hospital to be treated for ‘women’s troubles’, which I knew full well was a bad bout of VD she’d caught off a travelling salesman. The time had come for me to escape, to a better life, away from the poverty of the East End.

‘You think you’re too good for the likes of us,’ she spat, anger blazing in her eyes, which were like two fiery little coals. ‘Well, you’ll learn, my girl.’

I sullenly spread some margarine on a stale slice of bread for my breakfast.

‘Don’t you dare burn the house down with your nose in a book while I’m away or you’ll be for it.’ She glared at me.

‘I won’t. I can take care of myself,’ I muttered. ‘Not that you give a damn.’

The minute I heard the front door slam, I leaped to my feet.

I felt hot with excitement as my fingers crept over the rusty old lid of the tea caddy, where I knew she kept her takings for the week. I had to rootle around a bit in the tea leaves before I pulled out a crisp pound note, neatly folded. How many men had she slept with to earn that?

And how much had I put up with while she plied her filthy trade? That was more to the point. My childhood was punctuated by the grunts of strange men in her bed at night, their heavy footfall on the stairs waking me from a half-sleep; the lifting of the latch at dawn as they crept away, back to their homes and their wives and their unsuspecting girlfriends. What’s more, the contempt she bore for me, her only daughter, was written all over her face every morning and delivered in slaps and punches every night.

She owed me for everything she’d put me through since the end of the war, and as I clasped that money in my hand, I felt I was only taking back what was mine.

I glanced at my reflection in the hallway mirror. My face still had a smattering of the freckles I’d had since childhood, but the girl staring back at me was on the brink of becoming a woman.

‘Zoe, you are going to make a better life for yourself,’ I said, firmly.

God knows, I’d tried to swallow the reality of living in our grim house with its horrid scullery, but I couldn’t help dreaming. No matter how hard Mum hit me, she couldn’t beat hope out of me – and that only made her rage more intense. It was simply because I wanted more than she could ever give me that she hated me with such a passion.

The war had smashed houses to heaps of rubble and wooden splinters, but it had given me a glimpse of another world.

It was a world I didn’t belong to – yet – but I was determined that once I got my foot in the door, there would be no turfing me out this time.

Chapter Two

ZOE

Soho, 1957

I wanted to be where the posh folk were, so I hopped on a bus up to Piccadilly, and strolled through the Burlington Arcade, pressing my nose against the shop windows, gawping at jewels and furs and so much finery. They still had the Christmas decorations up and everything looked so warm and inviting inside. The stuff in those stores was beyond my wildest dreams and though my fingers were turning blue with cold, I lost myself in a daydream, thinking about how people would swan about their gorgeous houses, dripping with gold and fancy clothing; what nice conversations they’d have about all the books they’d read by the blazing hearth. All I got for my trouble was a clip around the ear from a few shopkeepers for leaving smears on their pristine glass and dirty looks from snooty women who clearly thought I was a guttersnipe.

I followed a girl my age, who was wearing a woollen coat with a smart velvet collar. She was chatting to her mother about the beautiful things they’d been buying. They carried an armful of neatly wrapped parcels each.

‘How do you do?’ I ventured, just as she was hailing a cab.

I thought if I could just strike up a conversation with her, she’d see that we spoke the same way and I knew how to behave in decent company, and then perhaps we could be friends.

‘Stay away from us, you dirty little beast!’ she shot back. ‘Mother! I think this horrid girl is trying to rob us!’

And she slammed the cab door in my face.

That was like a punch in the stomach. I reeled down Piccadilly, lured by the lights and the rush of people, all with somewhere to go and money to spend. The evening was drawing in, the temperature had dropped, and the quid in my pocket suddenly felt like very small beer indeed. People stared at me and my threadbare, too tiny clothes and filthy ribbons. I shivered a little.

They didn’t care that beneath the surface I could be like them, if only someone would give me half a chance. I was just another scumbag from the slums looking to steal, as far as they were concerned. A little knot of anger began to form in the pit of my stomach at the unfairness of it all.

Theatreland was ablaze with a thousand neon lights winking in the darkness, and I craned my neck to take it all in. There were endless streams of traffic; buses nudging their way past huge, glossy black cars which pulled up outside the foyers of gilded theatres. Women and men dolled up to the nines stepped out into the crush of people queuing to get in.

Street entertainers were working the crowd for pennies, and as a woman with an accordion squeezed it for everything she was worth, a cheer went up near the front of the queue, where a magician was pulling coloured handkerchiefs from the sleeve of another man’s jacket.

As I inched closer, I caught sight of that girl I’d seen before down Piccadilly – the one who was getting into the cab with her mum. It was a split-second decision to speak to her, just to explain that I hadn’t meant to scare her, but that she had no right to treat me like I was dirt. So, I took a deep breath and tapped her on the shoulder. Just as I did, she slipped her hand into the pocket of an old gent who was transfixed by the magician taking a budgie from a top hat. Quick as a flash, she pulled her hand out, as if she’d been scalded.

‘What’s your game, then?’ she hissed, spinning around to face me.

I found myself staring into a pair of blue eyes, frosty like icicles, which belonged to a girl who was probably only a few years older than me. They bored into me, and I realised then that I’d made a terrible mistake.

‘Do excuse me,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you, only I thought you were someone else.’

She burst out laughing, shaking her head full of dirty blonde curls.

‘Blimey, don’t you talk proper?’

She spoke like she came from round my way, in Limehouse, but she was dressed like the posh folk, with money to burn at the theatre.

She looked me up and down, taking in my threadbare clothes, the great expanse of leg protruding from my too-short skirt and the grimy ribbons in my hair. A few women in the queue sniggered at the sight of me. I knew then, I looked ridiculous, and that only made that little knot of anger in my stomach tighten more.

A broad grin spread across the girl’s face.

‘Hopping the wag, are you?’

I didn’t want to confess to being a runaway, down on my luck with nowhere to go, but my appearance told its own story.

‘No, I’m just visiting the theatre, like everyone else,’ I murmured, shuffling my feet on the pavement.

‘’Course you are!’ she laughed. ‘Got money for a ticket?’

I shrugged my shoulders and pulled out my pound note.

‘Yes, I have.’

She smiled at the sight of my money.

We were nearing the front of the queue now, and the snooty doorman in his peaked cap and gold epaulettes was looking right down his nose in my direction.

She linked arms with me.

‘I’m Rose.’

‘Zoe,’ I said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

‘Save your money, the show’s like watching paint dry,’ she giggled, as the doorman shot her a filthy look. ‘Come on.’

She pulled me from the queue and steered me up a dark side street, where raucous laughter rang out from grimy doorways and the most delicious smells of cooking wafted from exotic-looking restaurants, which were a world away from the pie and mash shop or the local chippy round my way. My head was spinning as I tried to take it all in and I couldn’t stop my stomach from rumbling.

‘You’re a right card, Zoe, but I like you,’ Rose chirruped as we wandered through a warren of backstreets. ‘Do you need somewhere to stay?’

I hesitated for a split second. The pavement looked cold and hard, and it was covered in pigeon shit.

I nodded.

‘Well, Zoe,’ she said. ‘I reckon you’ve landed on your feet. Welcome to Soho.’

We turned into a garden square illuminated by hissing gas lamps and Rose pulled me down some concrete steps and past an old metal sign saying ‘Air Raid Shelter’.

She pushed open the door, and through the gloom I could just about see a group of people sitting around a large wooden table, chatting as trinkets were held up to the light of a candle. An old woman sat at the head of the table, in a rocking chair.

The whole place fell silent. I could almost hear my heart pounding.

‘What’ve you got there, Rose?’ said the woman, her mouth pressing itself into a thin, hard line. The temperature dropped several degrees.

Someone flicked a switch and a single electric bulb hanging from a dusty cord in the ceiling spluttered to life, revealing walls of cracked plaster and peeling paint. The woman looked like a granny from the olden days, with her steel-grey hair parted down the middle and worn in a neat bun. She peered at me over a pair of round spectacles, her eyes flashing with indignation.

‘This is Zoe,’ said Rose proudly, puffing her chest out like a strutting pigeon. ‘She’s a new friend I’ve just picked up around Theatreland. I reckon she could come in handy.’

You could’ve heard a pin drop.

‘Well, you reckoned wrong,’ said the woman, swiping a pile of gold chains from the table and shoving them into a beautiful wooden sewing box before I could get a closer look at them. She slammed the lid firmly shut.

‘She looks like Raggedy Ann’s younger sister. This is the Underworld, Rose. It ain’t a charity, you know that much,’ she said, coldly.

I felt tears prick my eyes. It was true – I looked like I belonged in the workhouse. I didn’t want to sleep on the streets, and I had nowhere else to go, but my voice had deserted me.

‘Sorry, love,’ said the woman, with a shrug of her broad shoulders. ‘We’re stuffed to the gunnels already. I’ve enough trouble as it is, trying to stop the drunks from Piccadilly coming down here to use our place as a public convenience. You’ll have to sling your hook. Now, hoppit.’

She picked up a silver-topped cane which was resting against her chair and tapped it, as if she meant business.

‘Please, Maud,’ said Rose, a crestfallen look sweeping across her features, ‘give her a chance, you’ll see …’ Her voice trailed off.

I glanced around me.

You couldn’t call it a palace – in fact, far from it – but there were oil lamps glowing beside jam jars filled with fresh flowers on the table, and candles flickering on tea chests in the darkest corners, where rows of iron bunk beds left over from the blackout still stood. But, oh, those beds looked so nice and comfy, with soft quilts, blankets and plump pillows. There were other homely touches – antique clocks, some fine china, a rail full of dresses and furs, and a few rugs scattered about the concrete floor. Maud had truly made it feel like home. I really did want to stay, even if the whole place did smell of damp.

Rose nudged me so hard in the ribs, it almost winded me.

‘Speak up, or you’ll be out on your ear.’

Maud was getting up now, and walking towards me, to send me back up the staircase and into the cold night. She was tall, and the way she moved reminded me of a train intent on reaching its destination.

‘Good evening,’ I said, lowering myself into my best curtsey and extending my hand, as if I were being presented at Buckingham Palace. ‘How do you do? I’m Zoe, and it is a pleasure to meet you. I am only looking for some work and a place to stay for a while. I promise I will pay my way.’

I produced my pound note with a flourish, and offered it to her.

Her mouth fell open in astonishment.

‘Very posh indeed, ain’t we?’ she laughed. ‘Such lovely manners! Where on earth d’you learn to speak like that?’

She snatched the pound note away in a trice and stuffed it down her blouse before I’d even had time to explain myself.

‘I had elocution lessons during the war when I was an evacuee,’ I said, quietly, feeling the faintest hint of a blush creeping up under my collar as she had a proper look at me, peering closely at my hair in its filthy ribbons. She hadn’t said I could stay and now she had taken all my money. ‘But I really grew up in the East End.’

She broke into a grin.

‘Oh, you sound just like one of those Mayfair ladies with hot and cold running servants, you do! I bet the East End never heard anything quite so fancy. Never mind a plummy accent, you sound like you’ve scoffed the whole fruit bowl, dear.’

The whole room erupted at her joke. A couple of girls who’d been snoozing in the bunks sat up and rubbed sleep out of their eyes.

‘Wakey wakey!’ Maud boomed in their direction. ‘Come and meet Zoe, she’ll be staying with us for a while.’

They clambered out of bed, pulling on their clothes with a yawn, and shuffled over to greet me. Just then, the door to the air raid shelter was pushed open and the magician I’d seen earlier doing tricks at the theatre strolled in, with a white cat at his heels.

‘Evening, David,’ said Maud. ‘You’re just in time to meet our newest recruit, Zoe, who speaks beautifully, la-di-dah.’

David reached up his sleeve and pulled out a bunch of paper flowers, which he presented to me before sauntering off towards a battered leather armchair in a dark corner of the shelter. I clasped them tightly. It was such a kind gesture.

‘David’s one of the finest magicians in the business,’ said Maud. ‘At least, he was until someone pinched most of his act and started poncing off his skills. So, he works with us now, because we appreciate his special talents.’

David smiled to himself, took off his top hat and settled himself in the chair. He reached inside his jacket pocket and fished out a bottle of gin, which he put to his lips. Maud glared at him for a split second and that was enough to make him change his mind.

‘He was drunk in a Soho doorway, down on his luck when I found him,’ she whispered to me. ‘I like to think I help keep him on the straight and narrow.’

I was so happy in the Underworld that I gave Maud a little hug. She recoiled a bit.

‘No offence, love, but when was the last time you had a bath?’

I stared at the floor. It was true, my face only had a passing acquaintance with a dishcloth.

‘Our old tin bath had more leaks than the Titanic, so I never really bothered with it,’ I replied, shuffling my feet in shame. ‘And my mum refused to give me money for the local baths, so I just managed as best as I could with the sink in the scullery.’

A couple of the other girls chortled with laughter, and Maud reached over and clipped them round the ear.

‘Shut up, you lot!’ she barked. ‘It ain’t Zoe’s fault she’s poor. We’ve all come from somewhere and don’t you forget it. We don’t ever poke fun at girls from slums, do we?’

They shook their heads.

Her face softened, and I found myself gazing into her eyes, which were green, like emeralds.

‘Now, don’t you worry, I will get Rose to take you up to Marshall Street tomorrow morning and I’ll give you a sixpence for a nice hot bath,’ she said. ‘All my girls get a good wash once a week at least. Just because we live down here, don’t mean we lack certain standards.’

Her black blouse was starched and buttoned up over her ample bosom and her skirt was old-fashioned, reaching to just above her ankles, showing off an inch or two of thick woollen stockings above her sturdy lace-up shoes. It was hard to guess her age because she was almost fizzing with energy as she spoke to me, but I thought she must be old enough to remember the Great War, and maybe even earlier than that.

She gestured to the row of expectant faces gazing at me.

‘These are the Piccadilly Commandos, a fine bunch of young ladies, and we all work together to put food on the table and share what we’ve got, because London can be a very tough place when you’re on your own, can’t it?’

There were murmurs of approval.

‘What kind of work do you do?’ I asked.

A few of the girls exchanged glances.

‘Second-hand sales, mostly,’ Maud cut in. ‘There’s always demands for trinkets and china, watches or small leather goods up in the markets. Ain’t that right, Rose? And there’s always plenty to be had, if you know where to pick them up.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Rose, smiling sweetly. ‘People love a bargain.’

‘And by working as a team, we find it easier to get by. It’s just like one big happy family,’ said Maud, beaming at me.

She leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘I’ll tell you what, Zoe. If you like, you can call me Ma.’