“Why don’t you ask her?”
Niven laughed. “It’s against my mother’s religion to give straight answers.” His, too, of course. “I have to go.”
* * *
—
Azzopardi patted the great girth of his belly with satisfaction and called for more port. It was the deprivation of prison that had made him greedy. The betrayal, too, that he had suffered when he realized his fortune had been lost. He had remade it, exporting whisky to Prohibition America from Scotland—Leith to New York, via Montreal, he may as well have had his own shipping line—but that only gave him money, it didn’t give him vengeance.
He didn’t really want Nellie’s clubs, they were simply a forfeit. For what was owed to him, for what she had taken from him. “More port!” he said jovially to the waiter. God, he loved England.
The Audition
Freda had rehearsed and rehearsed for her audition until the City clerk who rented the room beneath them threatened to “drown her like a kitten” if she didn’t stop it. She had a new audition piece—“Tea for Two”—which she sang while executing a snappy tap dance. She had a nice voice, thin and high.
She had chosen her outfit carefully. After much consideration, she had settled on a tartan skirt and a broderie anglaise blouse beneath her favourite cardigan, cherry-red, hand-knitted in a complicated stitch, with tiny shell buttons in the shape of daisies. It was a tight fit nowadays but had a sentimental value that she hoped would bring luck. It had been the last thing that she had modelled for the Knits, an appearance in Grimsby, and Freda thought of it as a farewell gift from Adele, even though Adele knew nothing about its pilfering. To Freda it felt like a gift, whether it was or not.
Freda had taken an extra bath this week in preparation for the audition. She went with Florence once a week to the public baths on Marshall Street, where they splashed out sixpence for a first-class warm bath, taking it in turns as to who should go in the water first. In honour of her audition, Freda had paid tuppence yesterday for a second-class bath and had the luxury of having it all to herself. The washing facilities in Henrietta Street were limited—they shared a cold-water sink on the landing and a water closet that was always stained and smelling of urine. Mrs. Darling was a stranger to cleanliness. She also seemed to have an intense dislike for people and yet, even far away in the attic, they could hear, day and night, the rat-a-tat-tat of the demonic doorknocker.
Miss Sherbourne had finally managed to secure a proper audition for Freda, at the Adelphi Theatre in the Strand, for the chorus of a show called Betty in Mayfair. “I pulled a lot of strings to get you this audition,” she said, “so mind you do your best to impress them.” I always do, Freda thought.
Since running away from home, the bright light of success that Freda thought of as her follow-spot had slowly begun to fade. But now everything was about to change, the light was burning brightly—Freda Murgatroyd was on the road to stardom! At last!
* * *
—
Her cardigan stretched tightly as Freda struggled to fasten the little shell daisy buttons. “You look nice,” Florence said, still lying lazily in bed, even though the day was in full swing around them in the boarding house. “They’ll be impressed at the Adelphi.”
“Thank you,” Freda said, doing a twirl and dipping a little curtsey. Florence insisted that she pin Mrs. Ingram’s little bluebird brooch to the red cardigan. “For luck,” she said. Freda didn’t see how it could be lucky to wear stolen goods, but she complied as it seemed to make Florence happy.
“What will you do while I’m at the Adelphi?” she asked Florence. （What did Florence do with her time?）
“Oh, this and that,” Florence said. “I’ll meet you afterwards in the Lyons on Coventry Street and you can tell me all about the audition.”
Freda felt a sudden chill. She imagined this was how people must feel on the morning of their execution. The moment of reckoning was upon her. There was a fork in the road ahead. On one side was a path that glimmered with the gold it was paved with, leading to fame and success. On the other side was a soot-smirched alleyway that led to despair. What if that was the path she was forced to take? What then?
“Don’t be such a dramatic cuckoo,” Florence said, untangling herself from the bedsheets. “Come on, let’s go and get some breakfast.”
* * *
—
After they had eaten, they wandered around for a bit until it began to rain. They parted on the Strand, near the Adelphi. “Fingers and toes crossed,” Florence said, giving Freda a hug. She smelt of the mint humbugs that she ate all day long. Florence would turn into a mint humbug if she wasn’t careful.