She broke into a run, the suitcase banging against her legs, but it was no good. Freda thought she was making a little ground, but then she came across some boys larking about and they started to run alongside her, jostling her, making fun of her, and when she wouldn’t stop and talk, one of them put his foot out and sent her flying. They ran off, laughing, leaving her to nurse a badly bruised knee. She bit her lip to stop her tears. She would not cry.
As she clambered to her feet, another elderly gentleman appeared by her side—London seemed to be full of them—offering to assist her, but she shook him off. Who knew what his intentions were?
There was no sign of Florence. Freda doubted now that it had ever been her. Hunger must have fed her imagination. Was there no bottom to the depths that despair could take her to?
* * *
—
After leaving Green Park, Freda had spent several more purposeless hours wandering around Soho, dodging unwanted attention. At last, thank goodness, a large clock hanging above a jeweller’s told her that it was time.
She cast off her day clothes in a public convenience on Piccadilly, perching her suitcase on the toilet lid and taking out her dancing shoes and her favourite frock. It had grown small for her, even though she had lost a lot of weight recently due to her enforced diet of penury. It was not a frock as such but her Peaseblossom costume from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She had loved the spangled green dress so much that she had quietly slipped it in her bag after the last night of the production. Minus the wings. They wouldn’t fit in the bag. She still missed them. Not theft, exactly—Mr. Birdwhistle’s wallet and the cherry-red cardigan from the Knits notwithstanding, Freda was not given to thieving. No, it had been the siren call of beauty and was therefore excused.
Hail, mortal! Freda had extemporized the exclamation mark and said her only line so resoundingly that you could hear it all the way at the back of the stalls in the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, or so Florence had reported. Freda had given her two tickets and she had brought her mother along. “Very pleasant,” Mrs. Ingram said afterwards, which was damning with faint praise—something Duncan used to say.
Where was Florence? She had disappeared as mysteriously as she had appeared on the doorstep of the convent as a baby. Absurd though it seemed, Freda couldn’t shake the strange feeling that Florence had returned to wherever she had come from. She should have been bolder, she should have pushed her way into the police station in Bow Street and given them Florence’s details. If she saw the nice policeman who had given her the half-crown （she still felt the pain of its loss）， perhaps she could ask him to help.
When they first arrived in London, Freda and Florence had spent their evenings companionably wandering the exotic streets of Soho, marvelling at the variety of people and shops and restaurants. It was not just like being in a foreign country, it was like being in a hundred foreign countries at once. To their surprise, they had discovered that in the capital people seemed to do nothing but drink and dance as though they were possessed. It was as if one huge, mad party was cranked up after dark beneath the pavements of the capital, only to fade away with the dawn.
“Like fairyland,” Florence had said. Florence was very au fait with fairy lore, and she had a lovely illustrated book of Grimms’ tales that Freda often used to leaf through for the pictures. Fanciful Florence had once claimed to have seen fairies in her garden, hiding in the laurels. Perhaps she should have her eyes tested, Freda suggested.
Florence had instructed Freda on the etiquette of fairyland, which seemed to be a very frightening place, not at all like A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “You must never eat or drink in fairyland” （as if she were planning a visit）， Florence admonished. “Always be polite and remember nothing is what it seems to be. They’ll serve you wine in crystal cups and peaches on golden plates, but really the wine is pond scum and the peaches are snails. And all the gold and jewels are just rocks and ashes.” Florence could wax quite lyrical when it came to fairyland.
They spent quite a lot of time speculating about what went on inside the nightclubs of Soho. Florence had her vision of fairyland to fall back on, but Freda imagined it to be more like the pictures of Mount Olympus in her Child’s Guide to the Greek Myths—people lying around on couches eating ambrosia and drinking nectar while someone played a harp.
* * *
—
Freda had to eat. To eat she needed money. But if you want to earn money, then I know a way. Do you? Want to earn money? the horrid police sergeant who had stolen her half-crown had asked. He had taken out his notebook and written something down in it, and then he had torn off the page and folded it up very small and pressed it into her hand, as if they were playing a game of Consequences. “It’s an address,” he said. “There’s people there who’ll find work for you.”