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last six Christmases.”
    Charlotte dropped her hand and stalked back upstairs. Her good dress was in a pile where she’d stepped out of it in the early hours. As she picked it up to shake it out, the smell of stale beer and damp ashes rose up at her and a memory of the previous night tumbled out.
    She hadn’t expected that Johnny to show up, though she’d been relieved not to be alone with Ted after Annie had shooed them out of the house while she got the baby off to sleep. Ted had once said something about Johnny marrying some Scotch girl who had a room in Spitalfields, but Charlotte would always catch him staring at her if she ever happened to look his way. Last night she’d felt miserable when George didn’t turn up again, all he ever seemed to do these days was stay in with his sister. The realisation that he wasn’t coming made Charlotte reckless, allowing the men to buy her drink after drink. Even Ted was being unusually generous, when he knew he’d be better off lending her some money for Annie than getting her intoxicated. She had let them choose what she had and the mixture of gin, sherry and beer had made her drunk enough to feel quite detached from her own body.
    As she had stood at the bar begging Maggie for a glass of water to slake her thirst, the barmaid’s jowly face looking impassively back as she continued her ineffectual polishing, Charlotte had suddenly caught sight of her distorted reflection in the bevelled glass behind the bar. Her eyes were so unnaturally bright, her cheeks so strangely flushed, that she’d wondered if she could be running a fever. Johnny had suddenly appeared in the mirror beside her and laughed at her staring at herself.
    “Get this girl another drink,” he called to Maggie, who, with a rare smile for Johnny, obediently tucked her cloth back into her apron and picked up a green bottle, still brim-full of gin. “Straight up is how she likes it. Isn’t that right, Lottie?”
    He gave her a kiss on her burning cheek as he spoke and, in their reflection in the glass, she could see him looking intently at her. She didn’t like it much but he was buying her another drink and she found it difficult to make herself care. George wasn’t there, after all, though she’d only been persuaded to go along with Ted because George was almost always there on Friday nights.
    Outside, after they’d been tipped out onto the street so Maggie could lock up, Charlotte had let Johnny kiss her again, this time nearer her mouth. She had turned away then, but lost her footing in the gutter and stumbled back into his arms, Johnny’s hands tight around her waist while Ted watched from a doorway, his pipe reduced to a red ember in the gloom. Catching his eye, a sudden shame that she had let Johnny pay her so much attention penetrated even through the fug of the drink.
    Reliving it now, she felt nauseous and hurled the soiled dress into the corner. The tiny leather purse she tied to her skirts came loose and skittered across the floor after it. She reached down to pick it up but before her fingers had grasped hold she knew it was entirely empty, not even a penny left to mollify Annie with.
    Still, even with the worry of money and Annie’s threats to throw her out, her mind kept wandering back to George and his repeated absences. A seed of anxiety had taken root in her stomach during recent weeks and she couldn’t ignore it any longer. With new decisiveness she resolved to go and seek him out immediately, first on Wiltshire Row and then, if he was working, she would go to the print—it was only an hour until midday, when he got his break. Once she found him, she would win him round as she always had before. He might even lend her a bit of money.
    She threw on some clothes and pulled a comb through her snarled hair, pinning it up and then spraying it with scent to cover the smell of old smoke that had curled into its lengths the night before. She rushed downstairs, shouting to Annie that she was