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‘As soon as Linda gets the laundry van, I’ll move the harness into that and you can practice for real,’ Shirley said.

Dolly threw herself back and forth in her seat. The harness held fast. She gave Shirley the thumbs up.

‘Right,’ said Dolly. ‘I’m in the lead van — Linda’s laundry truck — all strapped in, shotgun by my side, sledgehammer by the rear doors. The security wagon’s behind me and you lot are in the van behind the security wagon. Bella, you’ll have your chainsaw and shotgun, Shirley, you’ll have your shotgun, Linda, you’ll be driving.’ Dolly looked at the girls, standing by the side door of her van, listening. ‘Go and stand by the back doors of this van for now. We’ll do everything from the stop to the moment I burst the back doors open.’

Shirley, Linda, and Bella lined up at the back doors of the furniture van. ‘Ready?’ Dolly shouted.

‘Ready,’ Bella shouted back. ‘I’m timing you.’

‘At the twenty-yard marker, I slam the brakes on, the security wagon rams into the back of me, I drive forward, then ram backward, and now the security wagon’s trapped between my van and yours.’

Shirley, over-excited, piped up, ‘I run up to the security wagon and cut their aerial off so they can’t radio for help.’

‘Shut up, Shirley!’ Bella whispered. ‘You don’t do that yet — Dolly hasn’t finished her bit...’

Dolly continued, oblivious to Bella and Shirley, ‘I undo my harness...’

There was a sudden silence. The girls glanced at each other. They closed in on the back doors of the van, and all they could hear was Dolly mumbling ‘fucking thing!’ Bella stopped the stopwatch and they all waited.

Shirley asked. ‘Need a hand with the harn—?’

‘NO!’

They heard the harness buckle drop to the floor. Bella started the stopwatch again.

Dolly shouted, ‘I undo my harness, move to the back doors and...’ with one huge kick from inside, the back doors of the van flung open to reveal Dolly standing there, legs wide apart like a bloke, swinging the sledgehammer above her head. One of the van doors smacked Shirley on the shoulder, sending her flying, and the sledgehammer was so heavy that it topped Dolly over backward.

Bella stopped the stopwatch again. ‘Don’t swing it overarm,’ she said, ‘you swing it underarm, just like you did at the beach.’

Dolly clambered to her feet. ‘Again. From the top.’

The three women stood by the back doors of the van listening to Dolly shouting her routine again. This time, as Dolly kicked the back doors open, she swung the sledgehammer underarm, letting go of it at the end of the swing, sending it flying across the garage and forcing them to dive out of its way. She then swung the shotgun up to her hip, pointed it at the imaginary security wagon and yelled: ‘Stay where you are!’

From where she’d landed on the floor, Bella shouted, ‘Bleedin’ hell, Dolly! You didn’t say you was going to let go of the sledgehammer!’

‘I’m throwing it through the windscreen of the security wagon! Course I’m going to let go of it.’

‘I meant now!’ Bella got to her feet and then helped Linda and Shirley up.

Dolly looked down from the van at them ‘How does it look?’ she asked.

‘Well,’ Linda replied, ‘it’ll look a whole lot more convincing if you take the safety catch off the shotgun.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Dolly cursed as she looked at the shotgun. ‘I get my finger caught every time. You’ll have to help me, Linda.’

Without thinking, Linda stepped forward and talked Dolly through how to remove the safety catch. Bella watched Linda teaching Dolly, with patience and kindness; they could get on when it really mattered. Suddenly she realized what she was actually watching: a shooting arcade worker teaching a convent volunteer how to work a shotgun. She shook her head, put her hand to her mouth and snickered. Sometimes it was hard to believe what they were doing.

Once Dolly had got the hang of the shotgun’s safety catch, Linda returned to stand by Bella and Shirley. ‘Right, let’s hear what you’re going to say,’ she said.

Dolly swung the shotgun up onto her hip and shouted, ‘Don’t move! Guard in the back, show your face at the hatch!’

Three blank faces stared up at Dolly. ‘Is that what you’re going to say?’ Shirley asked.

‘Well, what do you want me to say? “Stick ’em up, this is a raid”?’

‘Come on, you lot, sort it out. I got to go to work.’ Bella said, resetting the stopwatch.

Linda stepped forward again to help. ‘It’s not what you’re saying that’s the issue, it’s your voice. You sound like bleedin’ Bambi! Apart from pissing themselves laughing, the security guards will know it’s a woman’s voice and the cops will be straight onto us.’

‘Can you lower your pitch?’ Shirley suggested. ‘There was a singing round in a beauty competition I entered once and I had to learn how to sing a semi-tone lower than I normally—’

‘DON’T MOVE!’ Dolly bellowed.

Bella shook her head. ‘That’s still Bambi, just louder. Stick something in your mouth and try again.’

Shirley handed Dolly a white hanky with a red ‘S’ embroidered in the corner. Dolly stuffed it into her mouth and this time when she shouted, the words were completely inaudible and she nearly choked herself.

‘Forget it for tonight,’ Dolly said, spitting the hanky out onto the floor. ‘Bella’s got to go anyway.’

As Bella slipped into her motorbike leathers, they all chatted about Carlos. Dolly watched — three friends gossiping, reassuring, getting on like a house on fire. For a moment, she felt a twinge of jealousy, but she knew she had to keep her distance.

Dolly dished out her final orders for the night. ‘Right, listen you lot. It’s all coming together now, so let’s keep well away from each other as much as possible, right? I know you can only talk to each other about certain things, but it’ll have to wait till you’re all in Rio together.’

‘We,’ Bella corrected. ‘Till we’re all in Rio together.’

‘Don’t start that again,’ Dolly said, picking up her tweed coat and handbag.

Bella continued regardless. ‘It’s the only bit of the plan I still got a problem with, Dolly. But it’s easy fixed.’

Dolly flung her handbag down. ‘Come on, Bella — say what you mean! You don’t want to fly off round the world because — what? Because you won’t know where the money is being stashed, right?’

‘Spot on,’ Bella replied.

‘And you need to know because you don’t actually trust me, do you? Still, you don’t trust me! So far I’ve laid out nearly seven grand of me own money and trusted all of you with that. When the robbery’s done and we all head off in our different directions, who’ll actually have the money at that stage, Bella? Me? No. You will. The money will be in the boot of the getaway car, while I’m in the bleedin’ laundry van that we still haven’t nicked yet. Have I once doubted your honesty and whined about the possibility that you could run off with the money immediately after the robbery? No! I wouldn’t do that to you. I don’t make decisions just for my benefit, I make them to safeguard the lot of you.’ Dolly moved toward the three women. Shirley and Linda stepped slightly behind Bella for protection. ‘I know you all much, much better than you think,’ Dolly continued. ‘Do you reckon, after a few drinks, Linda could keep her mouth shut about all that money if she knew where it was? Do you think Shirley might not be tempted to slip her mum a couple of hundred?’ Dolly paused briefly to see if any of them would be brave enough to answer... they weren’t. ‘I’m not telling you where the money will be stashed because one slip of the tongue and we’ll not only have the law down on us, but every villain in London including the Fishers who, you may have noticed, have gone to ground. Boxer’s dead, Carlos was raided — that’s why the Fisher brothers are keeping their heads down. They’re scared, confused and they don’t know what’s going on. All they know is that it looks like someone might be out to get them and they don’t know who. They think it’s Harry — good.’