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out for a morning perambulate around Hyde Park, followed by a hearty breakfast of pork sausage, fried potatoes and batter pudding.
    ‘ Eeee! ’ Martha shrieked, her filthy hands flying up in the air. ‘The red devil!’
    ‘Get your things, Martha,’ the turnkey said, her plain face wearing its perpetual scowl. ‘You’re being shifted.’
    ‘Shifted! Shifted! Shifted!’ Martha spun round, the rags of her dress flicking out around her scabby, bare legs. ‘No, I won’t be! I won’t be shifted! Martha likes it here!’
    The turnkey sighed. ‘Come on, Martha, you need some time in solitary. Before someone does you a proper injury.’
    ‘No!’ Martha thrust a dirt-encrusted finger at Friday. ‘ She wants to steal me place.’ She turned again and pointed towards an empty corner. ‘ And me fine things. The king give me that card table, you know!’
    ‘Right, Martha, that’s enough.’
    The turnkey moved towards Martha, who retaliated by whipping up her tattered skirts to display straggly grey pubic hair above the sagging, blue-veined skin of her emaciated thighs. A hideous rotting fish smell wafted from her, making Harrie gag.
    Grasping Martha’s arm, the turnkey yanked her towards the door. The old woman began to scream and kick, in the process knocking over the bucket they’d all been peeing in during the night.
    ‘You know she’s got the women’s cancer,’ someone said as Martha was dragged outside. ‘Be dead soon.’
    Someone less kind remarked, ‘Good riddance. Stinking old bag o’ bones.’
    Harrie waited until Martha and the warder had gone, then escaped out into the pale, cold sunlight, hugely relieved to exchange the fetid miasma of the ward for the sharp, smoke-tainted morning air. She crossed the yard to the pump, worked the handle and splashed freezing water over her face. Desperate for a proper wash but too embarrassed to undress, she held open the neck of her blouse, cupped water in her hand and had a go at her armpits, soaking herself in the process.
    ‘Poor old bat, thinks I’m the devil incarnate,’ a voice said.
    Harrie turned around; it was the girl with the copper-coloured hair, a small leather pouch clamped under her arm and a tin in her hand. Opening it, she took out a cake of tobacco and sliced off two slivers with a small knife, realised she didn’t have enough hands, swore, and crouched, setting everything on the ground.
    ‘I’m not,’ she went on, addressing the dirt, ‘despite what some people say.’ Crumbling the tobacco flakes until they’d achieved a satisfactory consistency, she poked them into the bowl of her clay pipe, then rummaged around in the pouch. ‘Bear with me. Won’t be a mo’.’
    Harrie watched, fascinated.
    Producing a tiny compendium, the girl stood, took out a Congreves match and struck it against the attached strip of sandpaper. The flame flared hugely, singeing her hair. Managing to swear roundly and light her pipe at the same time, she drew on it and coughed until her eyes watered. She coughed again, then hoicked and spat.
    ‘Beg pardon. I’m Friday Woolfe. And you should cheer up, because it could be worse. And don’t bother with the bathing, love. Everyone in here stinks to high heaven.’
    ‘How could it be worse?’ Harrie said, a little more rudely than she meant to. What did this girl know about her situation? She was clearly all right herself, if she could afford to buy tobacco and proper matches.
    ‘Well, you could be swinging on the end of a rope.’
    Harrie looked at Friday Woolfe. She was a good four inches taller than Harrie, with strong, round arms, a neat waist and full breasts, pale, lightly freckled skin and glorious, wild, copper-coloured hair. ‘That’s not a very nice thing to say. And I don’t mean to be cheeky, but Friday’s quite an odd name.’
    Friday Woolfe looked contrite and uncomfortable, as though the first were an emotion she rarely bothered with. ‘Sorry. It’s my mouth. Sometimes it opens and things