* * *
—
Vanda had a flat nearby in a dark alley that ran behind a row of restaurants. To get to it you had to weave your way past an obstacle course of galvanized dustbins giving off their scents of fish and offal and something darker and more offensive. “They’ve been poisoning the rats,” Vanda said. The smell followed them into the building （“They’ve died in the walls”） but had, thank goodness, mostly dissipated by the time they reached Vanda’s front door on the third floor. “It’s quite a climb,” she said. “I had one gentleman conk out on me on the second-floor landing. His heart. Dead as a dodo. Shame.
“Home sweet home,” she said, opening the door with a flourish.
* * *
—
And now Freda lived there, too. Somewhere to come home to every night and soak her aching feet in an enamel bowl of hot water, courtesy of a little gas water heater fixed to the wall next to the kitchen sink. There were two rooms—a kitchen and a bedroom. Freda slept in the kitchen, in a bed in an alcove, like a cupboard really but with a curtain on a string that she could pull across. To get to her little cubbyhole she had to negotiate a forest of Vanda’s stockings and knickers （“trollies” she called them mysteriously） that were draped everywhere to dry.
Vanda and her friend Joan, who had the neighbouring flat, clacked up and down the stairs all night long, bringing “gentleman friends” home with them, something Freda only discovered on her night off, because normally when she got back from the Sphinx the gentleman friends had gone and Joan and Vanda would be sitting in the damp, warm little kitchen, smoking cigarettes and sharing a bottle of gin. “Mother’s ruin,” Joan said cheerfully. She’d had a son in the Navy, she said. Freda didn’t like to ask what had happened to Freda’s Grantham baby.
Joan had a coarse face and strange hair, an unnatural black that she plastered down on her head to hide a bald patch, but she brought in Empire biscuits for Freda and made her cocoa. Joan had different gentleman friends from Vanda because she had what she referred to as “specialities.”
“Like vanilla puffs and French fancies?” Freda asked, remembering Mr. Birdwhistle and his cakes.
“Yes, pet, something like that,” Vanda said, still maintaining her role as the protector of Freda’s innocence, not knowing that it had already been violated. Freda preferred to keep Owen Varley to herself, it seemed too late now for sympathy and understanding.
Sometimes the three of them played cards and Vanda reminisced about their time on the road with the Knits and what a card sharp Duncan had been. When Freda said that she had heard Duncan was in prison, Vanda said, “You don’t know, then?”
What didn’t she know? “Hung himself,” Vanda said, and Joan said, “Christ,” even though she’d never known Duncan, and they toasted his memory in gin and cocoa and Empire biscuits.
* * *
—
The Sphinx had closed later than usual tonight. There was no sign of Ramsay, and the Dutch barman and the Glaswegian manager had stayed open to make some extra money for themselves.
Freda didn’t like walking home in the dimly lit streets at this hour. There were always the unexpected she had to sidestep—people appearing out of nowhere like jack-in-the-boxes. Some wanted money or to sell something to her, but quite a few just wanted her. Tonight, she had the shivery feeling that someone was following her, but whenever she looked behind her she couldn’t see anyone.
There was a cat yowling somewhere and she could hear the tail end of a drunken fight. A lot of singing and shouting as well, no doubt a consequence of alcohol, and she made her way through the side streets in an attempt to avoid whoever it was.
There was someone behind her—in a car that was creeping along slowly. The dance hostesses at the club were full of tales about girls being snatched off the street. Luckily, at that moment she ran into a group of drunken men and the car drove off. She wasn’t much good with cars but she could have sworn it was the same one that she thought had taken Florence. A Wolseley Open Tourer, the man in the showroom had called it.
Not so lucky, it seemed, as one of the drunks caught her by the waist and lifted her up as if he were going to carry her off. The others just stood around laughing.
It never stopped, did it?, Freda thought. Wherever she went, she was just some kind of trinket to be played with. First thing tomorrow she was going to arm herself with a knife.
She managed to twist out of the drunk’s grip and run off. For a moment she worried that the pack was going to follow and hunt her down, but when she looked back they had disappeared.