33

Saturday evening

Ruby shivers. The night is chillier than she expected – but then, she has only just emerged from her flat, so how was she to know?

Peter left two hours ago, telling her to dress and to be at the club. Saturday is the club’s busiest night, and he wants her there.

She shivers again. Her coat is undone, so she wraps it tightly around her and folds her arms, concentrating on the pavement, hurrying her steps.

‘Sorry,’ she mutters as she bumps into another woman. ‘Oh.’ She blinks in surprise, seeing the honey-coloured coat. ‘You.’

Harriet Littlemore takes a step back. She is in a state of agitation, fiddling with her hat.

‘Are you alright?’ Ruby is curious. ‘What are you doing here?’ This is no street for a lady like Harriet Littlemore – even she should realise that.

Harriet straightens herself and stands taller. A habit, Ruby assumes. Something she does when she’s anxious or nervous. Like you would if you were in a fight. Ruby straightens up herself, instinctively, and is amused by her own response. She is the shorter of the two by a couple of inches, but it would not be an even match if it came to throwing punches.

‘I came to the club, to the Angel,’ Harriet says. Her voice trails away, lost in the sounds of other people out on the streets for the evening.

‘I wouldn’t have thought it was your sort of place.’ Ruby just about holds back the laugh.

Harriet bristles and steps back, the top of her head briefly illuminated by a streetlamp, surrounding her with a bright halo. ‘Why not? It might be. You don’t know where my sort of place is.’

Ruby stares, transfixed by Harriet’s hair.

‘You cut it!’

Harriet puts a hand to her neck, feeling the edge of her crop.

‘I did.’ She pauses, a neatly waved lock of hair brushing the tip of her finger as she moves her head just a little. ‘What do you think?’ She asks in an intense way, as if Ruby’s opinion, here in the street, really matters.

Ruby Mills is an arbiter of fashion now. She stands, considering, tipping her own head this way and that to assess the cut.

No one ever asks her opinion of anything.

‘I like it,’ she concludes. ‘I told you it would suit you. Makes you look…’ She searches for the right word. ‘Fresh. No, not fresh. It makes you look alive.’

Harriet lifts her chin a fraction, and, under the streetlamp, her face glows. Her eyes are shining.

‘New hat, too,’ Ruby says. ‘I like that as well.’ It is nearly the same colour as her best coat – the blue Poiret she took from Grace Bartlett’s warehouse, after much pleading. She recalls that she was wearing the coat when she and Billy raided the jeweller’s shop.

Harriet stands as if she is waiting for approval, acknow-ledgement, eyes wide, mouth slightly open. Something about this pleases Ruby. She has seen younger girls in the Forties look at Annie Richmond like that, or sometimes Maggs. Like they are waiting just to be noticed, to be blessed by a nod or a smile from the Queen of the Thieves.

‘Really, though, what are you doing here, Miss Harriet Littlemore?’

Harriet does not answer immediately. She appears uncertain and her response is vague. ‘I know the owner, Peter Lazenby. We met yesterday evening, and he spoke of it. I wanted to see it for myself.’

‘Yesterday evening?’ Last night Peter Lazenby was in the club, pushing her in Alex Somers’ direction. ‘When?’

‘Oh, early. We were dining at the Savoy. We had cocktails – my fiancé and I, I mean – and then Peter arrived, and we were introduced. They were in France together, you see.’

‘Ah.’

Sweet and stupid, Peter had called her. And Ralph, the fiancé with money for diamonds, was one of his associates. He had told her all about Ralph Christie this morning – when he had not been screwing her or draped over her, fast asleep. ‘But he isn’t with you tonight?’

‘Ralph? No. No. But I wanted to see the club, so I came alone.’

Harriet may or may not be stupid, but she is certainly an innocent. Ruby would bet her best jewellery that she has no idea what Ralph involves himself with – or Peter, for that matter.

‘I can take you into the club if you like. Show you around. I know the people. I’m often around here, these days.’ It wouldn’t hurt to take her inside, introduce her to the barman, dip into the pockets of her coat…

‘No, I’ve been inside already, but I have to leave. The police are on their way. That’s why I was sent out of the back door.’

‘Coppers? Shit. Peter’ll be livid,’ Ruby mutters to herself. She narrows her eyes at Harriet and asks sharply, ‘When are they coming, do you know?’

‘No. Soon, I think. Half an hour, perhaps? Earlier than usual, the cloakroom boy said.’

‘I should go and see what’s happening.’

‘Do you think so? Shouldn’t you walk away? You might be caught.’

Ruby shrugs. ‘Doing what? Coppers don’t bother me.’

‘A notorious thief. One of the famous Forty Thieves. Why wouldn’t they be interested in you?’

‘You’re right.’ Ruby winks at her. ‘I could be up to anything, couldn’t I? But you should go. No, I mean it. Not for your own sake. If Peter Lazenby is having to deal with coppers, you’ll be a distraction.’ Harriet looks oddly vulnerable. It’s the short hair, perhaps, that gives her a childlike appearance. Ruby reaches out a hand and touches her sleeve. ‘You’ll be alright? Getting home?’ The coat is as soft as she imagined. She folds her fingers around Harriet’s arm and squeezes it. She can feel from the nap that this is a recent purchase. It’s not yet been caught in the rain or left over a chair in a smoky pub. The edges of her own coat fall open. Her dress – red spangled satin – is flimsy in the chilly air.

‘Yes. Quite alright.’ Harriet stares at the dress, and then at the hand, but does not move. ‘I can find a taxicab easily enough.’

Two other women hurry past, arm in arm, clutching each other and swaying a little as their heeled shoes meet the uneven pavement. Ruby recognises them from the Angel and steps away from Harriet.

‘Trouble,’ one of them says, calling over her shoulder to Ruby as her companion tugs her along. ‘We’re off to Dalton’s. You want to come?’

‘Later,’ she shouts after them. ‘I’d better go,’ she says to Harriet. She does not wait for a response but pulls her coat back around herself and heads towards the front entrance of the club.

The foyer is almost empty when the doorman lets her in. The only person there appears to be Daniel, the cloakroom attendant – and he is barely recognisable.

‘What happened?’

Daniel’s left eye is swollen and there is blood all over his nose and mouth. He is half-standing, half-sitting against the wall; his lanky frame has folded in on itself, like a broken branch that has fallen from a tree in a storm.

He shakes his head. Whether he cannot speak or is unwilling to speak, Ruby cannot tell.

‘Who did this, Daniel?’ She knows the answer, even as she asks.

His right eye waters, causing the kohl to run black tears down his cheek.

Peter emerges from the stairwell, hair ruffled and tie loose, an ugly look on his face.

‘Are you still here? I told you to get out. Fuck off, before I throw you into the street.’

Daniel shrinks further against the wall, scrambling to stand up. Ruby does not move to help him. You do not help someone when the man who punched him is only a few feet away – she learned the rules years ago.

Daniel stumbles, falls through the door of the club and disappears into the night.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Peter snaps at her. ‘You’re late.’

‘Nowhere,’ she says. ‘What did I miss?’

‘That simpering bloody fool told me we were about to be raided by the police. He’d had word, he said, that they were coming early.’ He is furious. ‘I emptied the club, sent people elsewhere. But he was wrong. He misunderstood the message. We are not expecting the police for several hours, and I have sent my paying guests to Soho’s many other clubs, hotels and bars to spend their money. And I can’t send out my staff to invite them back if the police are still going to arrive after hours. Can’t call them back only to send them away again.’ He runs a hand over his hair, smoothing it down. ‘He’s cost me money on the most lucrative day of the week, and he’s lost me credibility – which is worse.’

And he’s lost his job for it, Ruby thinks. And possibly a tooth. Peter certainly doesn’t need the money, but he does not like being made to look stupid or incompetent.

‘This is the best nightclub in London,’ she says quickly. ‘Everyone knows that. They’ll be back tomorrow.’

He stands chewing his lip, angry, then reaches for her, blood on his knuckles, and pulls her close.

‘Ruby, Ruby…’ he murmurs into her ear, voice thick. ‘Come and dance with me, eh? Make it all better?’

Still in her hat and coat, she follows him downstairs, her hand clasped in his. The orchestra have packed their instruments away, but the pianist is still playing – something old from years ago. They dance slowly as the barman moves around the tables, gathering up abandoned glasses and ashtrays.

Daniel picks himself up from the pavement and rubs the back of his hand across the black slime oozing from his nose. He spits a glob of blood on to the ground.

‘Here.’ A clean handkerchief is thrust into his hand. ‘You’ll need this.’

He stares at the white handkerchief, neatly folded. ‘I’ll ruin it,’ he says, his voice little more than a sigh.

‘I have another. Wipe your face and I’ll buy you a drink. You look as though you need one. The pub across the street is decent. I’ve been sitting in it for a while. I saw what happened.’

Daniel looks up from the handkerchief to see a man in an ordinary grey coat and hat, with a brown leather satchel across his body. He looks like an overgrown schoolboy.

‘Thank you. I think I do need a drink.’

‘James Cartwright,’ the man says, offering his hand. ‘Let’s go and find you a pint.’

Harriet fidgets in the back of the taxicab, trying to put her thoughts in order. She crosses and uncrosses her legs.

The driver concentrates on the road and the route to Kensington, the last half-inch of a cigarette dangling from his lip. Harriet pays him no attention either. She is still standing outside the Angel with Ruby.

The girl’s coat and hat had been dark and plain. Brown, perhaps, or grey; she could not quite remember. But underneath the coat, when Ruby had grasped her arm, so concerned that she would be safe, Harriet had seen a flash of scarlet. Ruby had been wearing a red dress. And it must have been covered in spangles because it had glimmered under the streetlight. And red lips – she had painted her lips in such a daring shade, so that Harriet had been mesmerised by her mouth.

What had Ruby said to her? She tries to remember everything, savouring every detail of the conversation that had been curtailed too soon. Ruby had offered to show her around the club – she knew people there – and she liked her new hat and thought the hairstyle made her look fresh – no, alive.

She is alive. Her body is fizzing with an energy that has nothing to do with the glass of champagne she drank but feels like a million tiny bubbles rising inside her.