Текст книги "Without a Trace"

Автор книги: Lesley Pearse

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Molly grimaced. ‘Yuk. I hope you pushed him into the gutter?’

‘No, I was stupid enough to feel sorry for him,’ Dilys admitted. ‘But then he tried to kiss me, and that was so disgusting I came to my senses and ran off.’

Molly undressed and got into bed while Dilys told her about other disappointing dates she’d had. Molly loved listening to her; her sing-song Welsh accent was lovely. ‘Another bloke didn’t have a penny to his name, so we had to walk around in the rain. Another one turned up in his work overalls, and I was all done up to go dancing. I’ve had men asking me to lend them money for the evening; ones who didn’t want to take me anywhere except a park to grope me. I tell you, it’s enough to make you want to give up on finding someone special.’

‘I know this is a bit personal,’ Molly said hesitantly, ‘but have you ever gone the whole way?’

‘Ooh, there’s cheeky you are!’ Dilys replied indignantly. ‘I’ll wait till I’m married, thank you very much. Me dad would go potty if I got up the spout before I was wed. How about you?’

‘I haven’t either,’ Molly said. ‘But then I haven’t met that many men I feel that way about. There was a chap once, but he turned out to be a right sod. I met a writer called Simon, too, I thought he was perfect – handsome, from a good family – and I used to day-dream about him quite a bit. Turned out he was married, though, so just as well he didn’t try it on with me.

‘There is George, a nice policeman back home, though. I went to school with him. But now I’m here in London, everything and everyone from home seems to be fading away.’

Dilys nodded in agreement. It was the same for her. ‘I was homesick at first, but not any more. I went back home for a week’s holiday just after the Coronation, but after a couple of days I was dying to get back here. All my old friends seem so set in their ways, and Cardiff seemed very small.’

Long after Dilys had gone to sleep, Molly lay awake, thinking how odd it was that after only a month she couldn’t imagine ever living anywhere but London. She loved the bustle and noise, the beautiful parks, lovely old buildings, even the element of danger in some of the backstreets of Soho. She had the feeling she could become anything she wanted to be here.

Back home in the shop, she’d only ever heard about people’s ailments, about their children and what they were cooking for dinner. Gossip was usually about such trivial things, like someone jumping the queue at the doctor’s, a neighbour failing to give back something they’d borrowed, or the dog a few houses away that never stopped barking.

Customers in Bourne & Hollingsworth were often just as chatty, but they told her fun things, like they were meeting an old friend for lunch or they had come to London to buy something for a special occasion. Maybe they were just as dull as all her old neighbours when they were back home, but being in London was like living in a bubble that excluded dullness and mediocrity, and it made people dress up in their best clothes, smile because they were out to enjoy themselves and enjoy spending their money instead of begrudging it.

George had written to her every week so far. It was in his first letter that he told her that Simon had gone back to his wife and left the village. Molly felt that George had enjoyed telling her that – another reminder that people back in Somerset were small-minded.

But she had to concede that, small-minded or not, George was keeping a close eye on her mother. He reported back that Mrs Swainswick, the part-time help in the shop, had told him that Molly’s father had been less grumpy since she had left, and her mother was less nervy.

‘Perhaps,’ George suggested, ‘he’s happier now he has your mum’s entire attention.’

Molly didn’t care what it was that had made her father more amenable; it was a load off her mind to hear he wasn’t being violent or abusive to her mother.

On her second day off Molly went back to Whitechapel and spent the morning talking to Constance and finding out about the places Cassie used to go to: the library, Victoria Park in Bethnal Green, the market and the public baths. It was a bit of a shock to Molly to discover that people who didn’t have bathrooms – and that was nearly everyone – had to go to the public baths. So, mainly out of curiosity, she made her way there first that afternoon.

There was a big woman with a large, shiny, red face behind the desk. Molly got out the photograph of Cassie and showed it to the woman. ‘Have you seen this woman before?’ she asked.

The older woman just glanced at the picture. ‘Yep. Dozens of times. Why d’you wanna know?’

Molly explained what had happened to Cassie and Petal as briefly as she could. ‘The police aren’t doing much to find her killer or Petal, so I’m trying to discover more about her past which might help.’

The woman was horrified to hear that Cassie had been killed and immediately became much warmer. ‘She were nice,’ she said. ‘And her little girl as cute as could be, and well behaved. But I don’t know anything else about her, other than she lived in Myrdle Street. I’m so sorry she’s been killed. Why would anyone kill a nice woman like her?’

It was disappointing that the bath attendant knew nothing, but they chatted for a little while and Molly asked if she could see the baths, just so she’d understand how it worked.

‘You pay your money, I gives you a towel and some soap, and I tell you which bath is free,’ she said, leading Molly down a long corridor lined with small cubicles, a bath in each one. ‘I turn the hot water on from outside. It’s a set amount; you put the cold in yerself. I warn ’em not to drop their drawers on the floor or they’ll ’ave to go ’ome with wet ’uns.’

Molly sniggered. It all looked so austere: white tiles, too-bright lights, bare concrete floor, a slatted wooden board to stand on when you got out of the bath. And just a couple of hooks to hang your towel and clothes on. But she supposed if you had no bathroom of your own it was all right.

‘It ain’t so bad,’ the attendant said, clearly picking up on Molly’s distaste. ‘They can shout to their mates, ’ave a laugh with the other women. It’s nice and warm in the winter, too. They can do their washing and ironing here if they want, through the doors at the end. You must be one of the bleedin’ lucky ones that’s got yer own bathroom and inside lav at ’ome?’

‘Yes,’ Molly admitted, feeling ashamed she’d been so transparent. ‘Was Cassie all right about it? Or do you think she was like me, used to one at home?’

The attendant leaned back on a bathroom door and pulled some cigarettes out of her apron pocket. She took her time lighting one, looking at Molly all the while.

‘I’d say she had no real idea how folk like us live round here, ’cos the first time she come ’ere she looked scared to death,’ she said eventually, puffing smoke into the air. ‘She had Petal in a pushchair and I don’t think she could work out whether it was best to bath her or herself first. She learned fast, though. By the time she’d been three or four times she was like everyone else, ’aving a laugh and a joke, making the best of it.’

‘Did she ever tell you why she came to Whitechapel?’ Molly asked.

‘Why does anyone like her come ’ere?’ She shrugged. ‘’Cos it’s cheap. To disappear. You don’t come ’ere ’cos you like to slum it.’

At the library they also remembered Cassie and, here, the head librarian had read in the paper about her being murdered. ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ the woman said. ‘She was such a clever, well-spoken young woman. But then I was surprised when I first met her that she had a mixed race baby – not what you’d expect from someone who likes to read Jane Austen. Obviously, she’d got in with bad people.’

Molly had a real desire to say she was surprised that a librarian could be such a bigoted snob, but that wasn’t advisable if she was hoping to find out more about Cassie. Sadly, no one at the library knew anything more about her than that she took out at least four books a week and came in almost daily to read the papers.

Molly promised herself that she would go back to Whitechapel the following week and start asking about Cassie in shops and cafés, but when she mentioned to a couple of girls back at the hostel that she’d spent the day in the area, they both looked appalled. It seemed that everyone at Bourne & Hollingsworth thought of the East End as being dangerous and full of disease. It put Molly off a bit about going back, and it was another three weeks before she visited there again.

Yet Dilys thought Molly’s quest to find Petal was a wonderful one, and often, when they’d got into bed, Molly would read bits of Cassie’s journal to her, and they would discuss what she might have meant.

Molly had found references to Hastings and a place called Rye in some of Cassie’s writing.

‘Listen to this, Dilys,’ she said one night. ‘“The wind whistles across the marsh, forcing the trees to bow down to it. The sheep huddle together for warmth, and the few flowers that grow there are tiny and stunted, as are many of the folk that live there. Only the prickly gorse defies the wind, its yellow, sweet-smelling splendour spreads in defiance.”

‘What do you think of that?’ she asked her friend.

‘If I’d written like that at school I might not have got “Make more effort” written across my work.’ Dilys giggled.

‘Don’t you think Cassie was using the bleakness of the marsh to convey the sadness of her own life? That the wind is like someone laying waste to all her dreams and aspirations, and she is the gorse defying them?’

‘You sound like my English teacher, who used to tell me what Shakespeare meant. I never got it, and I don’t get Cassie’s stuff either.’ Dilys giggled again. ‘But I like you reading it and hearing your ideas. Who do you think the “someone’” is that’s laying waste her dreams?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe her mother or some other relative?’

Molly wondered if Cassie’s mother had been mad. She remembered once confiding in Cassie about her father, and seeing her friend wince as if she’d experienced the same kind of abuse. Of course, her father could’ve been the brute, before he went off to war. And if her mother hadn’t defended her, then that could be why she didn’t talk about either of them.

‘It’s a kind of mental illness,’ Cassie had said, about violence. ‘A rage inside your father that he can’t put out, maybe because something bad happened to him years ago, and when it boils up and spills over, he attacks you.’

She told Cassie about how her father had been robbed of the week’s takings from the furniture shop he’d worked at in Bristol and then blamed for the crime.

‘My advice is, don’t waste your sympathy on him,’ Cassie had responded, shaking her head. ‘Each one of us is given some sort of cross to bear; that is his, and he’s allowed it to destroy his life. He was fortunate that it was later proved he was innocent and he got compensation. Not many people get that.

‘I think he is the cross you have to bear, Molly. You can drag the misery he’s created around with you or toss it aside and choose your own path to happiness. Your mother has chosen her path, what she believes is the right thing to do, and you must accept it and leave her to it.’

One of Cassie’s poems was about crucifixion, and as Molly read it Cassie’s remark about the crosses they had to bear came back sharply into focus. She thought it was about Cassie being forced to give up the comfortable life she’d had to keep Petal. But Petal was no crown of thorns; she was Cassie’s delight, her reason for everything.

Molly was glad for Simon that he’d gone back to his wife, and hoped they’d find happiness again, yet she was disappointed he wasn’t in Sawbridge any longer and she wouldn’t be able to show him Cassie’s journal. He was a literary man, and he might have seen meanings in it that eluded Molly.

But he was gone, just another closed door, and however kindly George was in inviting her to stay at his house so she could see her mum, if her father got to hear she was there, it might just inflame her father’s temper.

George was another puzzle. He’d kissed her again before she left for London, and it had been a passionate kiss, not one from a mere friend. In the letters she’d had from him since, amongst the village news and amusing incidents concerning people she knew he had referred somewhat obliquely to not knowing how she felt about him. But he hadn’t revealed what he felt for her, so how could she respond?

Molly had discussed this with Rose, a girl she’d got friendly with who worked in Hosiery. She had a similar situation with Robert, her young man back in Birmingham.

‘I think we have to make up our minds what we want,’ Rose said. ‘Robert is a good man, all my family like him, and when I was living at home and working at the Co-op, I thought he was the one. But now I’m here and have seen how some people live, I don’t want to live in a couple of poky rooms with a bricklayer, however nice he is. I want style, nice clothes, to eat out in restaurants, and a house in a smart suburb.’

‘If George had courted me when I was at home I might have been only too happy to marry him and live in a police house,’ Molly said, squirming a bit, because she wasn’t really comfortable with Rose thinking she was too good for Robert now. ‘But he didn’t, and even now he isn’t saying he’s always loved me, or anything positive.’

‘Forget him. You don’t want some dull policeman in an even duller place. We’ll find ourselves a couple of dream boats at the Empire,’ Rose said with a grin. ‘We need to have a list prepared to tick off: good job, well educated, nice-looking, smart clothes, a car, parents with money.’

‘If they’ve got all that, they probably only want a girl for one thing,’ Molly said. ‘We aren’t that much of a catch, working at Bourne & Hollingsworth.’

‘Speak for yourself.’ Rose grinned. ‘And I might be prepared to go the whole way if the man was worth it.’

Molly laughed, because she didn’t believe Rose would ever go that far before marriage. Like most of the young staff here, she wanted fun, but of the innocent kind: going out to tea, the cinema or the theatre with a man, but nothing more. Molly had been told about a girl who’d been asked to leave back in the spring when it was discovered she was pregnant. The disdain and lack of sympathy for her expressed by many different girls was quite disturbing really, for surely some of them must have had moments with some boy, as she had with Andy, when she had almost succumbed.

In fact, Molly felt that if she ever felt that way again with a man who she knew loved her and who she could trust, she doubted she’d hold back. Besides, there were several girls back in Sawbridge who were pregnant on their wedding day, and their marriages were all happy ones.

Then, of course, there were Cassie’s views on the subject. She made no secret of liking sex and, often, when Molly had been listening to her speaking about her relationships with men, she’d felt Cassie was the most honourable, truthful person she’d ever met.

In one of Cassie’s poems she’d spoken of hypocrisy. ‘I am shamed by those who speak out with others’ voices, knowing that it is not their truth.’

She certainly didn’t think Cassie would’ve approved of anyone searching out a man using a cold-hearted list of required assets. She would’ve said that kindness, passion, loyalty and honour were more important.

But maybe Rose and other girls that said similar things were just showing off, trying to make themselves sound more sophisticated.

Dilys was fascinated by Soho – the strip clubs, jazz dives, gambling places and the spivs and floozies who worked there. One evening about six weeks after Molly had started at Bourne & Hollingsworth, she persuaded Molly it was time they went to a jazz club.

‘How can we not do it?’ she said. ‘Soho is right on our doorstep. Imagine how we’ll feel when we are old if we hadn’t dared to try it out?’

Molly liked the idea in theory, but there were always memos being posted up in the staff room about the dangers of Soho, advising staff to keep away.

‘Okay, then,’ Molly agreed, not wanting to seem dull and unadventurous. ‘If we go on Saturday we can be out till twelve.’

Both girls wore new dresses for their adventure. Dilys was in turquoise shantung, a princess-style dress with a stand-up collar that framed her face, and a flared skirt which they thought looked very sophisticated. Molly wore a cream crêpe sheath dress with three-quarter-length sleeves and a sweetheart neckline, the most daring, slinky dress she’d ever worn. Even though it was a bit chilly they decided against wearing a coat or cardigan, as they wanted to show off their dresses.

They went to a pub first for a couple of Babychams to give them some courage, and at nine they sauntered off to find the Blue Moon Club just off Wardour Street.

It was a bit disappointing to find they were too early. The emptiness of the basement club made the grimy walls, sticky floor and the smell of stale drink and cigarettes more noticeable. It was also very dark, just a few dim lights here and there on the walls and candles on the tables. A jazz quartet was playing, and a waitress in a very short black satin dress like a skater’s outfit plonked two glasses of red wine down in front of them and said, ‘They’re on the house,’ in a very surly way.

The wine was horrible, but they sipped it anyway, and when Dilys looked around two men at the closest table to them grinned and raised their glasses in a toast.

‘They’re old enough to be our dads,’ Molly said in horror.

Although both men were smartly dressed in dark suits, they had thinning hair and the slack jowls of men over fifty who drank too much.

‘As long as they buy us a few drinks, does it matter how old they are?’ Dilys said. ‘We’re here in a Soho night club at last! We don’t have to marry them.’

Molly liked jazz – sometimes they had a jazz band playing at the Pied Horse – but the band here was much better, and when a girl singer came on after a couple of numbers to sing ‘Frankie and Johnny’ it got even better.

At the same time, the two men came over to the girls’ table. ‘That red wine they give girls in here is terrible. Let us get you a drink you like?’

‘Well, thank you,’ Dilys simpered. ‘It is awful, and we’d love a Babycham.’

The taller of the two men introduced himself as Mike, waved his hand at the waitress and gave her the order, Babychams for the girls and whisky for them.

‘This is my pal Ernie,’ he said of his companion. ‘We’re down in the Smoke on a business trip and so I’m sure you won’t mind if we keep you company.’

It wasn’t a question, more an ultimatum, and both men sat down before either girl could respond. ‘So,’ Mike said, grinning at Molly. ‘What are your names, and where do two such pretty girls come from?’

Close up, the two men looked even more worn and saggy; they had bad teeth, paunches and nicotine-stained fingers. From their accents, they sounded like they came from Birmingham, and Molly felt a little threatened.

‘I’m Molly, from Somerset, and Dilys is from Cardiff,’ she said. ‘We are both nurses at the Middlesex Hospital. I’m a midwife and Dilys is a sister on the children’s ward.’

Dilys bit her lip so as not to laugh. They had said on the way here they would make up a different job and place to live as they didn’t want anyone tracking them down to Bourne & Hollingsworth.

‘We like nurses,’ Ernie said, and when he smiled his brown teeth were even worse than the girls had first thought. ‘Do you live in a flat outside the hospital?’

‘That would be telling,’ Dilys said with a very naughty grin. ‘Never tell a gentleman where you live, that’s what my granny told me when I came to London.’

The drinks arrived just as the club started to get busier. The girls downed their Babychams quickly and, almost immediately, a second round arrived. The men had moved their chairs closer to the girls and Mike kept trying to take Molly’s hand. All she wanted to do was listen to the great music and perhaps have a couple of dances, but it looked like they were stuck now with these two old men, and all the other tables had filled up, so even if they’d felt able to move there was nowhere to move to.

Molly drank the second glass of Babycham and felt a little squiffy. The music was too loud to really make conversation, and she could see Dilys was uncomfortable with Ernie, too.

But the club was exciting, lots of very elegant women in beautiful evening dresses, their hair just perfect, and the men all looked so suave and sophisticated. But there was an undercurrent of something odd. She noticed that there were other girls who came in without male partners, but they weren’t alone for very long; a man would always join them. Molly could tell just by watching that they didn’t know the girls.

By her third Babycham, Molly knew she was drunk, and she could see that Dilys was, too. Mike and Ernie took them to the dance floor for a dance, and Molly didn’t like the tight way Mike was holding her one bit.

‘I need to go to the powder room,’ she said to Dilys, giving her a surreptitious wink to make her realize she was to come, too.

‘Get us another drink in, boys,’ Dilys said, giving Ernie what passed for an affectionate tap on the cheek. ‘Won’t be long.’

‘We’ve got to get out of here, they’re horrible,’ Molly said once they were in the Ladies. ‘It’s half past eleven anyway, so we’ve got to get back.’

‘I’m too drunk to run,’ Dilys said, slurring her words. ‘I hope we don’t get seen by Matron. She takes a dim view of girls drinking.’

‘Come on, then,’ Molly said, opening the door a crack to check the two men weren’t watching. She could just see Mike’s head. He appeared to be watching the girl singer. All they had to do was to skirt round the edge of the club, keeping behind other people till they got to the door.

They bent over to walk to the door, but the ridiculousness of that made them giggle like schoolgirls. After a while, they reached the door that led to the stairs up to the street.

Just as they got to street level Mike shouted from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Wait up, girls!’ he yelled. ‘We’ll take you home in a taxi.’

‘Run for it,’ Molly ordered. She took Dilys’s hand and they tottered along as fast as their high heels and drunkenness would allow.

It was only after they’d turned two corners and there was no sight of the men pursuing them that they slowed down.

‘I’ve got a stitch,’ Dilys said, bending over to get rid of it. ‘My God, we can pick men, can’t we? What a handsome pair they were!’

They laughed all the way back to the hostel. ‘At least it was a cheap night,’ Molly said, after they had got into their room, without being seen by Matron. ‘Apart from the drinks in the pub, we didn’t spend anything. But I think the girls on their own in that place are – you know.’

‘What?’ Dilys asked.

‘Well, street girls,’ Molly said, explaining that she’d seen girls come in alone and then a man would approach them.

‘So maybe next time we try out some dive we need some nice male company,’ Dilys giggled. ‘I wonder how much Mike and Ernie would have been prepared to pay us?’

‘They could offer me a thousand pounds and I’d turn it down,’ Molly said. ‘Did you see Mike’s teeth?’

‘I don’t think he’d be using his teeth,’ Dilys said. They were still giggling after they turned out the light.

That night in Soho and the awful Mike and Ernie was something the girls often reminded each other of and laughed about, but there were many more memorable evenings, dancing at the Empire, at safer jazz clubs and in pubs. They learned that the girls they saw that night were club hostesses who got a fee for keeping men company. Mike and Ernie must have thought that’s what they were.

Dilys didn’t quite fill the hole that Cassie had left in Molly’s life, but in many ways she was an even more agreeable friend because they had no secrets from one another, they shared clothes, looked after one another and really liked being together.

Molly had been down to Whitechapel several more times, going to see Constance for tea and a chat, then asking questions around the neighbourhood, but although many people remembered Cassie and Petal, they couldn’t throw any light on Cassie’s past. It seemed almost unbelievable that anyone could become so embroiled in so many people’s lives without giving anything of herself away.

Through reading the journal again and again Molly was certain Cassie had either come from, or had long holidays on, the coast in East Sussex. Her plan was to go there, but as the weeks passed and the store gradually grew busier, with people buying winter clothes and looking ahead to Christmas, she knew she wouldn’t be able to do it till the new year.

It was frustrating and disappointing that she couldn’t find out anything new about Cassie and so was no nearer in discovering what had happened to Petal, but at least everything was fine at home in Sawbridge.

Her mother wrote every week, and she said that Jack had become easier to live with since Molly had left. She said he was doing more in the shop; he’d even painted the walls and got smart new linoleum tiles laid. One time when Molly telephoned her she said she thought Jack had always been jealous of Molly and Emily because they took her attention away from him. That was why he was happier now.

George also wrote often, telling her not only the village gossip but echoing her mother’s words in saying Jack was much less grumpy, sometimes even jovial. He also said her mother was looking more relaxed and was getting out some afternoons to go to Mothers’ Union meetings and to visit her old friends. He always said he missed Molly and wished she’d come back for a weekend, and reminded her she could stay at his house.

Dilys said it was obvious he was in love with her, but Molly thought she was being silly, as surely a man told the woman if he loved her. But, sometimes, late at night when she couldn’t sleep, Molly would think of George and his kisses, and wonder if she should say something in her letters back to encourage him.

But she didn’t want him to think she was homesick and only latching on to him because of it. Besides, with her in London and him back in Somerset, it was never going to work out anyway.

One night halfway through November, Dilys and Molly were just getting ready for bed, when Dilys suddenly blurted out that she had to warn Molly about someone.

Molly’s three-month probationary period was up now, and she’d been moved from Haberdashery to Gloves a while ago. With autumn well under way, the department was a very busy one.

‘Who?’ Molly asked, and giggled. ‘Is it Stan in the stores? He does keep leering at me.’

‘No, he’s harmless,’ Dilys replied. ‘It’s Miss Stow. She can be a real vixen.’

Ruth Stow was the senior assistant in the Glove Department. She was a plain woman from Shropshire, in her mid-thirties. She’d worked at Bourne & Hollingsworth since she was seventeen, and she was always snooty towards the younger girls.

‘Have I put a pair of gloves back in the wrong drawer?’ Molly asked, grinning, because Miss Stow was always complaining about assistants who did this.

‘No, that’s your trouble: you don’t. She thinks you’re after her job.’

Molly pulled back the covers on her bed and climbed in. ‘That’s daft. All I want is to be moved to the fashion floor before long. What on earth gave her that idea?’

‘You’ve had a lot of praise from customers, I think,’ Dilys said. ‘Miss Stow knows her stuff, but she’s starchy. People like a bit of warmth and someone who takes a real interest in them.’

Molly frowned. She couldn’t see what could have upset the older woman. She’d tried to be friendly with her, not just behind the counter but talking to her here in the hostel. But her manner was always chilly and Molly had got the idea it was because she was the senior assistant and felt unable to mix with anyone more junior.

‘It’s not just in the shop,’ Dilys said. ‘You’ve become popular with most of the other staff, including some of those above us juniors.’

‘Me, popular?’ Molly asked.

Dilys laughed. ‘Yes, very. Surely you’ve noticed that the girls always include you in anything going on and want to share a table with you at mealtimes. And I’ve heard some of the men are sweet on you, especially Tony in Menswear.’

Molly laughed. She was aware that Tony with the buck teeth was always gazing at her, but she hadn’t considered that people asking to share her table was a sign of popularity; she thought it was just because there was nowhere else for them to sit. ‘I have always attracted male lame dogs,’ she said. ‘Tony is good company, and he’s sweet, but not my type. But, tell me, what should I do about Ruth? Should I try and talk to her about it?’

‘I think that might just put her back up even more,’ Dilys said. ‘Just carry on normally and take no notice of her. Chances are she’ll decide all on her own that you’re no threat to her.’

‘But who told you this?’ Molly asked.

Dilys hesitated.

‘Come on, tell me,’ Molly urged her. ‘I’m not going to confront whoever it was.’

‘Well, it was Mr Hardcraft,’ Dilys said reluctantly.

Molly had been merely amused until then but now she realized that Dilys wasn’t just repeating a bit of harmless gossip. Mr Hardcraft was the floor walker, and his job was to look out for any kind of trouble, be it theft or anything else likely to disrupt business.

‘He wouldn’t have told you that Miss Stow was gunning for me. My guess is he asked you questions about me. So tell me the whole truth now,’ Molly insisted.

‘Well, okay, but don’t fly off the handle. He just asked me stuff like who your friends were and who you saw in the evenings.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Molly was bewildered.

‘I don’t know. I told him when you go out in the evening you’re always with one of us. He asked where you went on your day off, and I said you sometimes go to Whitechapel to see a friend there. Did I do wrong to say that?’

‘No, of course not. You aren’t the only one who knows I go to Whitechapel anyway, quite a few of the girls know, so it’s a good job you said it in case he got it from someone else. Do you think Miss Stow’s told him I’m keeping bad company?’ Molly asked. She knew staff could get fired for that.