Arabella couldn't remember the last time she'd had this much fun. Her cheeks were aching under the strain of all the laughter, and she was fairly certain that she'd pulled a muscle in her stomach too. It felt so good to simply relax and enjoy herself.

Tommy was so solemn now, so afraid to laugh in case one of the family caught him and punished him for daring to be happy, that Arrow House had become a mausoleum. His use of opium was also becoming a serious problem and he seldom managed an uninterrupted night's rest. There was nothing to be found in their home now but anger, guilt, and nightmares. If she was honest, it was a relief to be away from it all.

Alfie and Arabella had met at his bakery that morning to make arrangements for the next 12 months' worth of shipments of illicit booze that were due to be taken to the US via Canada. Their discussions had been concise, productive and, above all, amicable; Solomons seemed to feel no need to posture around Arabella as he would have done with Tommy or (god forbid!) Arthur.

After their business had been concluded, Alfie had taken her to lunch, which had turned into drinks, which had then, eventually, turned into dancing. Now, the two of them were relaxing in Alfie's parlour by a roaring fire his maid had left for them.

Alfie was acting out a long, convoluted story about the increasingly desperate lengths to which his female relatives were going in order to find him a wife – and his evermore outrageous attempts to fend them off without creating a rift in either his family or his community.

Alfie was seated comfortably to one side of the fireplace, his bulk completely filling an oversized armchair that creaked and protested as he got more involved in his story. Arabella was stretched out on a settee opposite, trying to work some life back into her stockinged feet after an afternoon of having them trodden on by ridiculously large men (or rather 'man').

She flexed her toes in the warm air, glad to have been able to discard her beautiful, but uncomfortable dancing heels. Despite the aches and cramping, Alfie had her full attention as he became more and more animated.

Now he was doing an impression of his tante Rachel, complete will eye rolling, praying to god for patience, and shrieking that he was going to give her a heart attack with his antics. In his eagerness to fully capture the old woman he was even mimicking her more extreme mannerisms - but it was done entirely without malice or cruelty.

Arabella was once again reduced to helpless laughter. She wondered if anyone else outside his immediate family had ever seen this side of Alfie. The kind side, the jovial, witty side - full of good humour and love for his apparently exasperating family.

'Perhaps you shouldn't run so hard next time they try to match-make', she said when she had managed to catch her breath, rubbing at both cheeks with firm fingers to ease the ache. 'You should have a family. It would give you a reason to keep on with all this.' She gestured towards the ostentatious richness of the room. 'So why is it that you've resisted them for so long?'

'By the time I met the right woman she was married to someone else.' Alfie heaved himself awkwardly out of his chair and slopped some more rum into both of their glasses. 'My family wouldn't never have accepted her anyways - so I suppose it don't really matter.'

To cover the vague feeling that she had heard something that she shouldn't, Arabella swiftly raised her glass and took a deep swig. She choked as some of it went down the wrong way. Alfie fussed around her until she had stopped coughing and wheezing, alternatively pounding her on the back or trying to force water on her. Eventually she managed to wave him away and he took his seat again.

He was silent now, staring at her, heavy-browed and brooding, over steepled fingers. It should have been off putting, threatening even, but somehow it wasn't. Alfie was a great bear of a man, especially with that dreadful beard and his unkempt mane of hair, but he had the most beautiful hands, and she couldn't take her eyes off them.

He had offered to rub her feet when they got back – as penance for the number of times he had stomped on them when they danced, he said – but she had said a prim and definitive 'no'.

Arabella felt like a hypocrite. She was married to a gangster, she had gone alone into illegal gambling dens, taken drugs, brutalised two bound men to get them to tell her what she wanted to know – she had even killed someone - yet she had been scandalise by the mere thought of any man but Tommy (who had never even offered) squeezing her toes.

Now, looking at Alfie's strong, elegantly tapered fingers as they rested against the bitten flesh of his lower lip, she felt a twinge of regret. She wondered what it would feel like to have those same fingers nip at the flesh of her inner thighs, to have the work-roughened tips catch at the silk of her…

She started abruptly as she realised what her mind was drifting towards. What on earth was wrong with her? Alfie was a friend and a colleague, nothing more. The mere thought that there could be anything else between them was… horrifying. Yes, horrifying. Definitely not intriguing or exciting. She could feel her cheeks flaming with shame. Please god let him think it was the fire. Or the rum.

Damn that rum! It must be that that was making her thoughts wander in such a new and disturbing direction. She drank gin for preference, but Alfie had insisted on opening a new bottle of a special over-proofed rum he had produced. It was potent and spicy and, at first, she had enjoyed the heat that it had caused to run through her. Now she was feeling slightly panicky.

'Rum is for fun and fucking', she though wildly. Alfie had told Tommy that, not long after they started working together, and Tommy had reported it back to her – half amused and half disapproving. Well they'd certainly had fun today.

Tommy found dealing with Alfie somewhat of a trial, which was presumably why he was happy for Arabella handle London matters whenever possible. That said, if he had known what was currently hovering just out of reach on the edge of his wife's subconscious, he would probably have locked her up in Arrow House for the rest of her life and buried poor Alfie's beaten corpse deep in the woods.

Looking up she realised that Alfie was still staring at her. There was a strange intent expression on his face and she had the dreadful feeling that knew exactly what images she was trying to suppress. Her stomach lurched guiltily and she shifted uneasily in her seat.

She sincerely wished that she hadn't told Matilda that she could accompany Ada to a Communist Party rally that evening. Her maid's watchful presence would have been a massive comfort to her right about now. A quick exit was her only option.

An hour and a half later, Arabella was curled shivering in her bed at Ada's house. The place was mercifully quiet with mistress, visitors, staff, and assorted hangers-on all off linking comradely arms at the rally in Tower Hill.

She had been glad to find everything in darkness when she got home as that had meant that no one had been there to hear her vomiting up her lunch, or the copious amounts of alcohol she had consumed with Alfie, but now she felt it gave her too much time to think.

Still nauseous, a little dizzy and, above all, heart-sick, Arabella had finally crawled between the sheets and prayed for forgiveness and the sweet release of sleep. She loved Tommy. She adored him. She would never, ever betray him with another man - the mere thought revolted her!

And yet, when she finally slept, her dreams were disturbed by endless images of Alfie Solomon's beautiful hands.