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back, counted the takings, and did fuck-all.
    But still, whoever said marriage was going to be perfect? She was a married woman – and this stranger was black . She didn’t answer him. She hurried on into the shop.
    He was there again the next day when she went to open up, on his own this time. She saw him loitering by the shopfront as she crossed the road, fumbling for the keys.
    ‘Hi,’ he said.
    Alicia looked at him nervously. ‘Hello,’ she said, fiddling with the keys, getting the damned thing into the lock with fingers that suddenly felt stiff.
    ‘How are you?’ he asked, turning towards her.
    ‘Fine.’ The key wasn’t working. She’d put it in upside down. She righted it, feeling hectic colour rising in her cheeks. ‘Where are your friends?’ she asked, for something to say.
    ‘Working.’
    Alicia was still having trouble with the lock. Working? According to Ted, black men were lazy scroungers, they didn’t work. But then Ted had strong opinions on nearly everything, and she’d more or less stopped listening to them now. Ted wasn’t exactly the fastest things on two legs, himself.
    ‘What do they do?’ she asked, not wanting to be rude by ignoring him. At last, the door swung open.
    ‘A little jammin’, you know.’
    Jammin’?
    ‘What’s that?’ she asked, curious, looking at him fully for the first time.
    He was very elegant, wearing the new fashion in trousers – Oxford bags, they were called – and a brown jacket. He was holding a black bowler hat in his hand; he’d removed it as she drew near. She noticed that his shoes were snazzy two-tone brogues.
    ‘We’re musicians,’ he smiled. ‘We’re renting a place just over there.’ He pointed across the street. ‘We hang out, we jam, you know.’
    Alicia didn’t know. She was just amazed that someone around here had let rooms to three black men. They must be really strapped for cash, whoever they were. And what he’d just described sounded like . . . like fun, and she had very little experience of fun in her life.
    ‘What do you play then?’ she asked.
    ‘Trumpet,’ he said. ‘You ought to come over and hear us play.’
    ‘I have to go,’ she said, and yanked the key out of the lock and went on into the shop.
    ‘I’m Leroy,’he said,and held out a white-palmed hand. ‘What’s your name?’
    Alicia looked at his hand and, not wishing to be rude, she shook it reluctantly. ‘I’m Mrs Ted Darke,’ she said.
    ‘No – I mean your name.’
    ‘Alicia,’ she said, and went inside and closed the door.

10
     
    It was nothing fancy. That was Ruby’s first thought as she stood outside on Monday at ten in the morning and waited for Vi to show up. The Windmill Theatre stood on a corner of a block of buildings where Archer Street joined Great Windmill Street, just off Shaftesbury Avenue, and it was very plain, nothing to write home about.
    ‘You came then,’ said Vi with a slight smile as she joined Ruby by the front steps.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Ruby, her mouth dry with apprehension.
    She’d lied to Dad, told the absolute whopper that she was starting work in the salvage centre. And he’d swallowed it, to her surprise. It was for charity, and as a churchgoer he had time for that.
    ‘It ain’t the Moulin Rouge, is it?’ she said.
    Vi led the way around the side of the building to the stage door. ‘You ever seen the Rouge?’ she asked.
    ‘Well, no . . .’
    ‘Well no. Thought not. Let me tell you it’s every bit as good as the Rouge. We have tableaux vivants and everything.’
    Tableaux vivants?
    Vi caught her puzzled look and gave a quick, feline smile. ‘You’ll see.’
    Ruby wasn’t even sure she wanted to. But she’d agreed to this, God help her. She’d lied to be here. She hurried after Vi and they stepped inside into chaos – or that’s how it seemed to Ruby.
    ‘Hello, Gord,’Vi said to a man behind a counter just inside the stage door.
    He nodded.
    Vi hurried on, past surging hordes of people in glitter, in