Lucky

Lucky is Angel’s only friend during her years at the Palace: an older, weary prostitute whose drinking and precarious position coexist with a genuine concern for Angel. She knows little of Angel’s past, but recognizes the danger surrounding her and ultimately asks Michael to get her out. Her own history, shared in fragments, gives their companionship a quiet depth: both women have known abandonment, though Lucky tells her story with humor and regret.

Identity and Background

The novel describes Lucky as a tired older prostitute who is growing stout through her thirst for brandy. She is isolated even among the women at the Palace: Angel is her only friend, and Lucky knows neither where Angel came from nor what happened to make her so guarded. Angel has made clear that her past is not to be discussed, but makes an exception for Lucky, whose talk and uninhibited manner offer a temporary distraction from her own memories.

Lucky reveals that her mother left when she was five. Her aunt, Miss Priscilla Lantry, took her in after years of caring for her own ailing father, but did not welcome the child warmly. Lucky recalls being beaten in the name of proper upbringing. Later, her mother returned after her aunt’s death and left Lucky with a note identifying her as Bonnie, signed Sharon. Lucky recounts the episode with laughter, yet admits that she sometimes wishes she had stayed to see her aunt’s reaction and sometimes wishes she could return and apologize. The story’s humor does not erase its underlying pattern of rejection and regret.

Friendship with Angel

Lucky’s bond with Angel is marked by practical care rather than demands for disclosure. She warns Angel that the Duchess may expel her if she does not reduce her drinking, and tells her to watch out because Magowan hates her. Angel responds bluntly about Magowan, but the exchange shows that Lucky is attentive to the threats around her friend even while struggling with her own dependence on alcohol.

Their friendship also offers Angel a rare space in which she can listen instead of defend herself. When Lucky retells her life story, Angel asks her to tell it again, finding comfort in the familiar account and hoping to set aside her own history for a while. Lucky’s companionship is imperfect and shadowed by drink, but it is one of the few relationships in which Angel receives uncalculated concern.

Intervention and Significance

When Michael comes to the Palace seeking Angel, Lucky recognizes him as the man who had repeatedly asked her to leave with him. Though Angel does not know she is speaking to him, Lucky pleads with Michael to get her out, even if neither he nor Angel seems to care anymore. Michael asks what is wrong with Angel, but Lucky says she cannot talk further and returns to the Palace by its back entrance before the Duchess notices her absence.

Lucky’s intervention is brief, but it turns private concern into action. She does not explain Angel’s circumstances or speak on her behalf in detail; instead, she urges Michael to remove her from a place where Angel is once again vulnerable to exploitation. Her own precarious life prevents her from offering a way out for herself, and her drinking remains a source of risk. Yet she recognizes Angel’s need and acts despite her fear of being missed. Through Lucky, the novel presents friendship not as rescue accomplished alone, but as the moment someone who has little power still chooses to warn, care, and ask for help.