Without a Trace (14 page)

‘We’ll all keep an eye out for her,’ George said, and the sincerity in his voice was touching. ‘I’ll whisper in a few ears, get my scouts out. He’ll need to get help in the shop, and I think that woman who helps out in busy times will be anxious to do more hours.’

Molly nodded. Her mother had said earlier that Hilda Swainswick had often offered to do more hours if she was needed. She would be good for the shop, too: she was hard
working, loyal and very fond of Mary, and she had the kind of husband who wouldn’t stand for his wife being bullied by Jack.

‘It isn’t for you to worry about my parents,’ she said. ‘But I appreciate it, and I must be going now. Eight o’clock tomorrow? ’

George got up out of his seat, too, and in two steps reached her and took her hands in his. ‘Be careful up there, won’t you?’

On an impulse, Molly leaned in and kissed him, and all at once his arms went around her and he was kissing her back.

‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ his mother said from the doorway, making them jump apart, blushing furiously.

She didn’t say what she’d come in for, perhaps too surprised at finding them kissing, and Molly and George just stood there feeling awkward.

‘I must go,’ Molly managed to get out, moving towards the door. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, George.’

He didn’t repeat the kiss at the station today, but remembering it now gave her a lovely prickles-down-the-spine sensation and, as she relived it, she got the stomach-flip thing again. How infuriating it was that George couldn’t have kissed her like that two or three years ago! Why did it have to happen just as she was planning to leave?

Molly stood still and looked up at the Braemar Guest House, 32 Sussex Gardens. It was identical to all the other houses in the once rather grand terrace: four storeys, steps up to an impressive door, but in desperate need of a coat of paint.

It had been a very long train journey; she was tired, stiff and her face felt as if it were covered in a layer of grit. Yet she wasn’t scared now. Simon’s map had been easy to follow and,
although London was frantically busy, with its countless cars and buses and so many more people rushing around than she’d ever seen in Bristol, it wasn’t as terrifying as she’d imagined. She thought it was exciting.

The door to the guest house was opened by an elderly woman with iron-grey hair, thick spectacles and a frilly white apron over a navy-blue dress. ‘You must be Miss Heywood,’ she said with a wide smile. ‘Come on in, my dear. After that long train journey you must be dying for a cup of tea.’

Molly knew right away why George liked staying at the Braemar: it was cosy and clean and Miss Grady, the owner, was kind and welcoming. Molly’s room was on the first floor at the back. It had a double bed with a cheerful red print bedspread, a dressing table and a small wardrobe, the window looked out on to walled gardens, and there were tall plane trees at the bottom of Miss Grady’s, which stopped the Braemar being overlooked.

The shared bathroom and a separate lavatory were both at the front of the house, but Molly had a washbasin in her room, too.

Over a cup of tea and a slice of fruit cake, Molly chatted to Miss Grady, telling her about her job interview the next day. Miss Grady offered to make Molly something to eat but, as tempting as it was to avoid the need to go to a café, Molly refused, because she felt it was cheating. Besides, it was an adventure coming to London, and it would be a shame to stay in the room on a summer’s evening.

It was just after ten when Molly got back to the guest house that evening. She had had egg and chips in a café, followed by apple pie and custard, and had then walked for what seemed
miles, looking in shop windows. The café experience hadn’t been frightening, though she had felt a little self-conscious eating alone. As for the fear of being robbed, that had vanished. She had kept a tight hold on her handbag, but she hadn’t feel threatened in any way. As she climbed into bed, she felt very satisfied with herself at overcoming some of her fears.

The interview at Bourne & Hollingsworth was held in an oak-panelled room right at the top of the building. Molly had heard someone refer to it as the boardroom. In films, such rooms had a huge, oval, shiny table and men sat all around it, but the one at the London store had a very ordinary long table, behind which sat the three interviewers, and in front of it, one single chair for the interviewee.

‘You do understand that being an assistant in a high-class fashion store is very different from slicing bacon and weighing up sugar and tea,’ one of the interviewers, a hawk-faced woman, said. She sat between two middle-aged men and was wearing a very smart black costume, her dark-brown hair in a bun. Her voice was what Molly’s mother would call ‘BBC’. Every word was pronounced with precision. All the questions she’d fired at Molly had been insulting to Molly’s intelligence, but she had responded politely.

‘Of course I know the difference between a fashion store and a grocer’s,’ Molly said, her patience beginning to run out. She was sure this hard-faced woman was appalled by the home-made navy-and-white dress and jacket and little white hat. She probably didn’t like Molly’s West Country burr either, so she might as well say her piece and be done with it. ‘But even if the products sold are very different, customer care
should be the same. I have been brought up to treat every customer as very important, to go that extra mile for them.’

To Molly’s astonishment, the more portly of the two men gave a little hand clap, glancing round at Hawk Face to see her reaction. ‘You are quite right, Miss Heywood. Customer care is the most important thing, but you do need to have a keen interest in fashion, too.’

‘I always read fashion magazines,’ Molly volunteered. ‘I am keenly interested in it and hope that you’ll give me the chance to prove my worth.’

‘Will you wait outside, Miss Heywood? We’ll call you in again later,’ Hawk Face said.

Molly went back outside with a heavy heart and joined the five other girls waiting there. Despite all the patronizing questions from Hawk Face, she thought she’d given a good account of herself, and the men had seemed impressed with her School Certificate results. But these other girls waiting all looked smarter, prettier and more confident than she was. She was just a country bumpkin in handmade clothes. It was tempting to leave now and avoid the humiliation of being turned down.

One by one, the girls went in, but they must have left the interview room another way, as they didn’t come back out to where Molly was. Finally, when she was the only girl left sitting there, Hawk Face called her in.

‘Well, Miss Heywood,’ one of the men spoke up. ‘We have decided to offer you a position here in Bourne & Hollingsworth, and would like you to begin in-store training with Miss Maloney, one of our fashion buyers, on Monday the seventeenth at 8.45.’

Molly’s mouth dropped open in surprise, but she quickly
pulled herself together. ‘Thank you so much. I hope I can justify your faith in me,’ she said, with as much dignity as she could muster.

Hawk Face half smiled. ‘We hope for that, too, and that you will have the stamina to remain cheerful and attentive to our customers at the very busiest times. Your room in Warwickshire House, our hostel in Gower Street, will be available on Saturday the fifteenth. It’s always better for our new girls to get settled in a day or so before beginning work, and it gives Miss Weatherby, our matron, a chance to tell you the rules over the weekend.’

Molly’s mind was reeling when she finally left the London store and headed for the tube station. She was to get a starting salary of sixteen shillings per week, her board and lodging all found. She would share a room with another girl and be issued with a black dress as a uniform. Some of the other things she’d been told – days off, commission and laundry arrangements – had all gone straight out of her head.

As the nearest thing she had had to a wage back in Sawbridge was the odd half-crown from her father, she felt rich just thinking about earning sixteen shillings. On top of that, she would get staff discount off anything she bought in the shop.

But just being chosen was the real thrill. Those other girls were well turned out, they looked confident and poised, but the interview board had picked her.

Her new-found confidence swept her on to the tube without a false step. But when she came out of Whitechapel tube station she had to stand still for a moment to regain her equilibrium, because it was like landing in a stinking, overcrowded hellhole.

Nothing had prepared her for such squalid mayhem. It
made her think of a huge anthill; there were people scurrying about and horse-drawn carts, cars, lorries and buses vying for routes between them.

Right opposite was a big, soot-blackened hospital and, even as she stood there, two ambulances tore into the forecourt, bells jangling. Adding to the tumult was a market which spread right along the street. She could hear the stall holders yelling out inducements to buy. But it was the smell which really turned her stomach and made her want to get right back on the underground. A potent mix of horse droppings, sewage, human body odours, rotting rubbish and drains.

It was a warm, sunny day and there had been no rain for a while, so maybe that was why the smells were so bad, but everyone looked terribly shabby, too. Very old ladies and men bent almost double over their walking sticks were wearing little more than rags. Young mothers wheeling ramshackle prams didn’t just have one baby in them but often a couple of toddlers and a big bag of washing, too. Everywhere Molly looked, the children were scrawny and pale.

She didn’t like it one bit. She felt threatened by the sheer numbers of people, and it was all so dirty and squalid. She had to go and see Constance now, because she was expected, but as soon as that was over she’d rush away from this horrible place.

She asked a man selling newspapers outside the station for directions to Myrdle Street, which is where Constance lived.

‘You sound like a farmer, ducks,’ he said. ‘You come up from Bristol?’

‘Near there,’ she said, surprised that he had any interest in her. ‘Do you know it?’

‘Never bin there,’ he said. ‘But I ’ad a mate in the army from
there and ’e sounded just like you. Come up ’ere to work, ’ave you?’

After a brief exchange with him, Molly followed his directions to Myrdle Street, only to find that Whitechapel Road was a smart address in comparison to the side streets she was now walking along. There were so many houses missing in the long terraces, big timbers held up the remaining ones, and the weed-covered bomb sites in between were now impromptu playgrounds for huge packs of skinny, pale, sharp-featured children.

Molly looked up at the remaining houses and shuddered, because she could imagine how grim and comfortless they were inside. Old folk sat on the doorsteps of some of the houses, and the sight made her feel unbearably sad for some reason she didn’t understand.

Myrdle Street was much the same as the others she’d passed through, but there was a gang of about twelve girls skipping over a long rope turned by two of the bigger ones. Molly paused to watch them for a moment, noting that they wore plimsolls on their feet, some with the toe cut out to give more room, they all had scabby knees, and every one of them wore a dress so faded and worn they looked like they’d fall apart in the wash. She was suddenly reminded that, however horrible her father could be, she’d always had enough to eat, good clothes and shoes. She hadn’t realized until now what real poverty looked like.

The front door to 22 Myrdle Street was open. Molly tapped on it and, when there was no response, she went into the narrow hall a little way and called out to Constance.

‘I’m back here!’ a weak voice called back. ‘Do come in.’

Molly nervously followed the voice to another open door
at the end of the passage. It led to a rather dark room with a kitchen sink under the window. Constance was sitting in a wheelchair.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t get up very easily,’ she said. ‘You must be Miss Heywood?’

Constance was very small and thin. She wore a grey cotton dress and a grey cotton veil over her hair. Molly felt that she must belong to some religious order and that she was perhaps in her mid-sixties, maybe even older.

‘Yes, I’m Miss Heywood, but please call me Molly. Thank you for agreeing to see me,’ she said.

‘It is my pleasure. Now, pull that chair up and sit down. Tell me, did you get the job?’

‘Yes, I did,’ Molly said, pulling the easy chair closer to Constance. ‘I’m sorry that I addressed the letter just to “Constance”, but I didn’t know your other name.’

‘I’m known round here to everyone as Sister Constance,’ the old lady said. ‘I’m a Church Army sister. We aren’t like Roman Catholics: we don’t live in nunneries but out in the parish we are sent to. This has been my parish for over twenty years now but, since I ended up in this wheelchair, my work is mostly of the listening kind.’

‘I’ve always thought that good listeners are very valuable,’ Molly said. ‘Will you tell me how you got to know Cassie?’

‘She came to live next door when Petal was just a few months old,’ Constance said. ‘I wasn’t in the wheelchair then, and I walked down the street beside her one day. I asked her if she’d like to come to the young mothers’ meeting at the church.’

‘Did she go?’ Molly remembered Cassie being very anti-Church.

Constance shook her head. ‘No, she said she wasn’t a “joiner”, but we chatted as we walked, and I realized she was on her own without a husband and asked her if she got lonely.’

‘I bet she said she didn’t know the meaning of that word,’ Molly said.

‘No, what she said was that being alone can sometimes be far better for you than having others around you. I agreed with her, and I talked a little about how I pray when I’m alone, and how it clears my mind.’

‘She didn’t run a mile, then?’ Molly said lightly.

‘No! Despite her claims to be agnostic, she was a very spiritual girl. She understood about meditation, and had read widely on many religions. But let’s leave that for a minute, Molly. Explain to me first about her death? I was so distressed to get your letter and, to be honest, it didn’t make much sense to me. Why would anyone kill Cassie?’