a big train and she wouldn’t have been looking out for me, would she? It would have taken me ages to run the length of the train as far as the engine.’
In the long night hours which had passed since Bonnie left, Grace had gone over every last detail of that day. At the time it had felt as if everything and everybody had conspired against her: missing the bus, Manny refusing to let her go without a platform ticket, Peggy being so slow to give her a penny, the machine deciding to hiccup at that very moment … But now, thinking more rationally about it, if her daughter had made up her mind to go, nobody could have stopped her. That was the rational thought, but her heart ached something rotten.
Elsie, her hair still in curlers under her headscarf, came out of her front door and followed Manny and Grace inside.
Grace Rogers always had an open house. Her neighbours knew that no matter what (and they didn’t need to be asked), they could go round to her place and she’d have the kettle on. All through the war, she’d seen them through the dreaded telegrams from the war office, the birth of a baby and the joy of a wedding.
Grace had also set up a couple of small agencies, one for people caring for their long-term sick relatives and the other for cleaners. For a small joining fee, the women she knew were reliable, could do a couple of hours’ sitting with the sick person or a couple of hours’ housework. The recipient paid a slightly larger fee to join and got some much needed free time. Elsie had used the service a couple of times.
‘How’s Harry today?’ Grace asked as she busied herself with the tea things.
‘So-so,’ said Elsie patting her scarf and pulling it forward so that her curlers were hidden. Her husband had survived the war but he wasn’t the same man. Once the life and soul of any party, now Harry struggled with depression. In fact, Elsie had a hard job judging his mood swings. When he felt really bad, he would spend more time by the pier staring out to sea. With the onset of winter Elsie was always afraid he’d catch his death of cold.
‘I see someone has taken over the corner shop,’ said Elsie deliberately changing the subject. Grace vaguely remembered a good-looking man watching her as she flew down the middle of the street the night Bonnie left. ‘He’s a furniture restorer,’ Elsie went on.
‘I wouldn’t have thought there was much call for that sort of thing around here,’ Grace remarked. She pushed two cups of hot dark tea in front of her guests and sat down in the chair opposite.
‘I have met him,’ said Manny. ‘Apparently he works on commissions.’ He looked up and noticed the quizzical look the two women were giving him and added, ‘He is a nice man. He gets on the train to Aroundel sometimes.’
‘It’s Arundel,’ Grace corrected with a grin.
‘Lives on his own?’ said Elsie. She was trying to appear nonchal-ant but it was obvious she was dying to know. Grace suppressed another smile.
‘That is correct,’ Manny nodded. ‘He fought at El Alamein with Field Marshal Monty and came back to find his wife shacked up with a Frenchy.’
Grace and Elsie shook their heads sympathetically. The war had a lot to answer for. It wasn’t only the bombs and concentration camps that had changed people’s lives. The French Canadians were billeted all over the town. On the whole, they were ordinary young men, three thousand miles away from all that was familiar and, as time went on, frustration set in. They had joined up to fight the Nazis, not to put up barbed wire on the beaches in an English seaside resort. As a result, their behaviour deteriorated and Saturday nights were peppered with drunken brawls in the town. Rumours circulated, although the story always came via a friend who knew a friend of a friend … When the war ended, a lot of ordinary people were left with very complicated lives.
Manny Hart was an attractive man with broad shoulders and a lean body. He had light brown hair, cut short, a strong square jaw and grey-green eyes. Nobody knew much about him except that he came from Coventry and he was a dab hand at playing the mouth organ. He’d apparently lost all his family, and considering the pasting the city had had, nobody liked to pry too much into his grief. He was very methodical, always doing everything exactly the same way, and was obviously a cut above the rest because he spoke public school English.
‘Well,’ said Manny putting his cup down. ‘I must be going. I have got a railway to work for.’
‘Thanks for the eggs,’ said Grace as she saw him to the door.
‘He’s sweet on you,’ said Elsie as Grace sat back down at the table.
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Grace. ‘You read too many romantic novels from that shilling library you belong to.’
‘You don’t blame me, do you?’ Elsie sighed wistfully. ‘There’s precious little love and happiness around these days.’
Mrs Smythe gave Bonnie some money for a taxi to the address in Aldford Street where she was to meet her prospective employer. It was just off Park Lane and in a very exclusive part of London, near the Dorchester Hotel where Prince Philip, the dashing husband of the Princess Elizabeth, had had his stag night the night before his wedding just a few days ago. She smiled as she recalled the newspaper pictures of the beautiful bride in her wedding dress decorated, they said, with 10,000 white pearls.
Bonnie knew enough about child care to know that most people in this area employed Norlanders, girls from a very exclusive training college in Hungerford. She’d once seen an article in a magazine and when she’d made her career choice, Bonnie had toyed with the idea of applying there herself; but it was totally out of her league. Only rich girls went to places like that. The fees were huge. She wondered why she had been sent to such an exclusive place when there were other girls eminently more qualified than her who could fit the bill, but then she remembered how fat the file on Lady Brayfield was and that Mrs Smythe had mentioned more than once that Richard could be ‘a little difficult’.
The house in Aldford Street was up a small flight of steps. Once inside, Bonnie was shown into a large sitting room on the first floor.
‘Lady Brayfield will be with you in a minute,’ the maid told her as she closed the door, leaving Bonnie alone.
It was a pleasant room with a large stone-built fireplace flanked by a basket on either side, one containing logs and the other a pile of magazines. Bonnie couldn’t help admiring the beautiful stone-carved surround. The house was probably seventeenth century, she guessed, maybe even older. It had a large window made up of many small panes of glass which overlooked the street, but the wooden panelling on the walls made the room rather dark. A round table stood under the window with a potted fern in the middle. A snakes and ladders board was positioned between two chairs and it looked as if the players had only just left the room.
The door opened and a middle-aged woman came in. She was elegantly groomed with lightly permed hair. She wore a soft dress of blue-grey material which clung to her stiffly corseted body and a single string pearl necklace. A cocker spaniel followed her in.
‘Good afternoon,’ she said crisply. ‘You must be Miss Rogers. The agency telephoned to say they were sending you.’ She lowered herself into one of the two armchairs and indicated with a casual wave of her hand that Bonnie should sit on the settee.
The spaniel sat on the floor next to Bonnie, its haunches on her foot. She moved her toes slightly but she didn’t complain. It didn’t matter. The animal was quite lightweight.
‘I’m not sure how much Mrs Smythe has told you,’ Lady Brayfield went on, ‘but your charge is a lot older than the children you are probably used to.’
Bonnie’s heart constricted. What was she doing here? The whole idea was an idiotic mistake. How could she possibly work for this woman? She was pregnant, for heaven’s sake. She started to panic and tried to compose herself as best she could, but already her face was beginning to flame. She cleared her throat noisily and found herself saying, ‘I don’t envisage that as a problem.’ She couldn’t bear the embarrassment of having to admit to this woman that she hadn’t exactly been honest with Mrs Smythe. No. If she was going to have to go back