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    Pictures of men and women and children, horses and houses and trains; some in fancy frames, others jammed into the surround of the big dusty mirror. Most of the people in them were strangers, the pictures acquired in a variety of robberies: sometimes Ma just took a fancy to them. Only one, of a boy of about ten, stood by itself atop the dressing table, in a heavy elaborate frame with a miserable-looking angel draped over the top. Unlike everything else in the room, it was dusted and cared for. That was Paulie, Ma’s son, who had died in one of the fevers that swept through every few months on hot dusty wings, leaving corpses in their wake. The boy’s face stared solemnly out, pale and dark-eyed, a sailor hat perched on his head. Eveline stuck her tongue out at him. He might look like a little angel in the photograph, but she remembered him as a proper little imp, forever pinching and whining and telling tales.
    There were heaps of costume jewellery and a tottering pile of fancy hats. A few books, with gilded pages and bright illustrations. Ma couldn’t read, but she liked books, especially picture books. Eveline had had some schooling, back before everything went to the bad – though if Ma thought she’d be able to teach Saffie to read, she was dreaming. Saffie was a sweet little thing, but had no more brains than a poodle.
    Eveline picked up a necklace of amber beads and tried them on, posing in front of the mirror, grabbing a vast gilded fan with two broken sticks. “My dear sir, I can’t possibly allow you the next dance, my card is quite full,” she said, fluttering the fan below her eyes.
    Not much of the day’s brightness got into this room. The dust on the mirror made a ghost of her; nothing but a pale smudge of face between a grubby shift and black hair, which wouldn’t curl despite Ma’s occasional efforts with the tongs. “Hair like a heathen Chinee,” Ma always said. Eveline smiled, thinking of Liu, then saw a figure in the doorway reflected in the glass. “Ginny.”
    “Ooh, look at Miss Fancy-Drawers.” Ginny grinned, showing several missing teeth. She had been a factory child, thrown out when a machine chewed her arm up. Ma had spotted her neatly dipping pockets with the arm that still worked, down in Whitechapel, and brought her home – much as she’d done with Eveline. Ginny’s wasted arm might not be much use as a limb, but as a distraction and a source of pity it made them some money.
    There were fifteen of them at the moment, ranging from Saffie, who was six, to Margot, who was seventeen. There were no boys. Ma didn’t want any of her girls pregnant or poxed, and discouraged mucking about with a heavy hand. She could spot a swelling belly in a blink. She’d get you dosed up, and if it didn’t work, out you went, to fend for yourself and the result of your folly. That troubled Eveline not at all; if she sometimes felt a pang at the sight of a young couple walking hand in hand, she only had to look at Docky Sal.
    There’d been a boy, a long time ago. They’d been too young for sweethearts, but he’d been something more than a friend – or so she’d thought. He’d not stood by her, though, when she needed him, and she’d never seen him since.
     
     
    M A P ETHER AND her girls all lived crammed in the narrow old crumbling house, and made their way by whatever form of trickery, stealing, and general illegality came to hand. They did well enough; everyone ate at least once a day, there was a roof to sleep under, and if you’d no shoes you could borrow some. All the girls knew what it was like to have none of those things and, sleeping out, to be fending off men who’d offer a few pence for a grind – and like as not wouldn’t pay, or would just take what they wanted whether you would or no. Eveline had learned early that you couldn’t always trust a smile or an offer of food. She got good at running, and if she couldn’t run, she would fight with whatever she could and then