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on the other side. It opened halfway to reveal a mole-eyed young man of about her own age with rumpled ginger hair, wearing a collarless flannelette shirt tucked into shapeless trousers. He looked – mistakenly – like a workman. Jessie had known Archie since he was thirteen, when he had given Timothy a black eye at school.
    ‘Gosh, Jessie! Jolly early in the morning to come calling.’
    ‘For heaven’s sake, Archie, it’s almost eleven o’clock. Hardly early.’
    His small eyes blinked at her uneasily. He might have hidden his breeding behind second-hand clothes, but he betrayedhimself in his upper-class vowels and a vocabulary straight out of a boarding school tuck-box.
    ‘I need to talk to you, Archie. About Tim.’
    ‘Oh?’ He didn’t open the door any wider.
    ‘May I come in? It’s filthy cold out here.’
    He made no move to admit her, so she stepped forward, forcing him to retreat into the dank hallway.
    ‘It’s not frightfully convenient just now,’ he muttered, belatedly standing his ground. ‘Next week would suit …’
    Jessie smiled. ‘Come on, Archie. Whatever or whoever you’re hiding in there, I won’t tell, I promise.’ She kissed his freckled cheek. ‘Unless it’s Tim, of course.’
    ‘It’s not Tim.’
    ‘Then let’s go in and talk.’
    She slipped an arm purposefully through his and steered him towards the door to the living room. It was always the same with men of Archie’s class, born to privilege and wealth. They might rule the British Empire but they had no idea how to stand up to a woman. She put it down to a childhood spent dominated by a nanny in starched white uniform who wielded the back of a spoon with enthusiasm over bare young knuckles. Why Archie Dashington had chosen to exist in this dismal working-class hovel while still drawing a generous monthly allowance from his father who was a minister in the Ramsay MacDonald’s coalition government, Jessie had no idea. Archie certainly didn’t appear to do any work, had in fact never held a job in his life, as far as she knew, not since leaving Harrow School along with Tim. She swung open the door, a tight grip on her host’s arm to stop him bolting.
    The smell struck her first. Unwashed socks and the sour breath from empty bellies. There must have been twenty men crammed in the small room. No sound. Just suspicious eyes fixed on her and a grey pall of cigarette smoke blurring the edges of scowls. Thin as ferrets, all of them, and dressed in work clothes. Some stood in huddles, others sprawled on the bare linoleum, a few proppedup the damp walls. Jessie could sense their hostility.
    ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ she said brightly.
    ‘Who’s this?’ a voice demanded. It came from a man who wore a stained flat cap and was chewing on a crust of bread. In fact, Jessie noticed that all the men had something to eat in their hands.
    ‘She’s the sister of a friend of mine,’ Archie explained with a dismissive shrug. ‘Just fussing over something. Nothing for you to worry about.’ He barged a pathway through the men, pushing her towards the tiny kitchenette at the far end of the room, and shut the door behind them, but not before someone’s hand had touched her calf as she stepped over him. Tiny was too big a word for the kitchenette. It was barely larger than a telephone booth.
    ‘Archie! What on earth is going on out there?’
    ‘Just some men.’
    ‘I can see that. Who are they?’
    ‘They’re marchers. Union men.’ He pushed his face towards her, worried. ‘Don’t say a word about them to anyone, will you?’
    ‘Marchers?’
    ‘The Means Test march.’
    ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Archie, are you crazy?’
    ‘No.’
    An organisation called the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement had rallied thousands of unemployed from all over the country to set off on a march on London to present a petition to Parliament. Against the Means Test. A million signatures. The snaking column of thousands of marching boots