Keep the home fires burning; that was what the troops had sung in the Great War. And she does, never going out without a carnival glass lamp switched on to welcome her home, its warped, lead-lined shapes throwing up a kaleidoscope of shapes against the wallpaper.

Locking the front door behind her, she starts the Morris and lets it tick over, still glancing through her front window at the bright, coloured glass. The blackout is still in force, of course, but no German bomber is going to release its cargo based upon seeing a carnival glass lamp from twenty-thousand feet. She pulls away from her front door, the gravel crunching beneath the Morris’s thin tyres.

*Scenes of violence*

My clients’ time is limited, as for that matter is mine in this role. Putting people to death was never exactly a career path – witness the hoods and cowls my predecessors wore to protect their identity – but public opinion has very much turned against capital punishment. The world war has been over for fifteen years and the public have decided that they’ve had enough slaughter for now. Add the executions of people like Ruth Ellis, pretty blonde cupcake that she was, and the mood around the noose really soured.