When the collection plate was passed around her fingers itched to remove a coin, but as her soul was probably already teetering on the edge of mortal danger she refrained from tipping it over. She took nothing from the plate but neither did she put anything on it, earning her a good deal of tut-tutting from the woman seated next to her in the pew.
She had no money to give. Worse—she had no Florence either.
After her encounter with Owen Varley it had not seemed possible to Freda that her life could get worse, but apparently it could. And it had.
* * *
—
Freda and Florence had reported the theft of the handbag in the Lyons to a desk sergeant in Great Marlborough Street police station straight after it had happened. Freda didn’t know why they bothered as the police weren’t in the least bit interested. Theft was so common in London that it made you wonder how anyone still had any possessions left.
“Now what?” Florence asked Freda as they left the police station. Freda sighed. Why was she the one who always had to make the decisions? Florence was such a lamb, always following, never leading. Perhaps lambs did lead, Freda didn’t know, but no lamb could possibly be as useless as Florence.
The rent was due and if they didn’t pay Freda knew that their landlady, Mrs. Darling, would find no sympathy in her hard heart for their reduced circumstances. “Unfortunately I am in reduced circumstances” was something that Duncan used to say in a funny voice that made both Freda and Vanda laugh. How she longed for Vanda to appear out of nowhere, like she said she used to do in her magic act. Vanda would have known what to do, and even if she didn’t, she would wrap Freda in her soft fur and give her comfort. And Vanda would understand what had happened to Freda at the Adelphi. Vanda would find a way to heal her and make her feel better. （In retrospect, Vanda had grown unrealistically saintly in Freda’s eyes.）
What would Vanda do, Freda wondered as they made their weary way back to Covent Garden. She would be practical, she didn’t believe in worrying. “You can always find something to sell,” she used to say, “even if it’s only yourself.” （“No one would want you,” Duncan had laughed.） A younger, more naive Freda used to find it funny, imagining Vanda displayed on a counter in a shop with a “For Sale” sign on her forehead.
As they were making their way along Wardour Street, Florence came to a sudden halt in the middle of the pavement. Her eyes and her mouth all made dramatic little “o”s of surprise and she flung her arms open wide. Freda worried that she might be having one of her visions.
“Can you see any angels just now?” she asked her.
“No,” Florence said. “But I know they’re all around us.”
Vision or not, she was creating quite a hazard for the other pedestrians. Freda dragged her into a shop doorway and said, “What?” quite abruptly, because obviously she was still furious with Florence over the handbag.
Florence prodded Freda in the chest （rather hard）。 “The brooch! You’re wearing the bluebird brooch.” Of course—Freda had quite forgotten. All this while the little bluebird had nested safely on her cherry-red cardigan, safe from the hands of thieves.
Freda reluctantly accepted that they would have to pawn the brooch, but that didn’t make her heart any less heavy at the thought. She remembered with regret the tender look of affection on Mrs. Ingram’s face when she had unwrapped her gift from Mr. Ingram.
* * *
—
Pawnbrokers were not difficult to find in London and they soon stumbled on one in Meard Street who scrutinized the brooch through a little magnifying glass as if he were trying to find any worth in it at all, and eventually only handed over a paltry amount of money, a mite of what Mr. Ingram must have paid for it. They had a month, the pawnbroker said, handing them a ticket, before he would sell the brooch. Freda couldn’t imagine how they would ever manage to redeem the pledge but they had to pay the rent, and eat, as Florence had reminded her several times already. （It really wouldn’t hurt her figure to starve for a bit.）
Freda crammed the ticket and money into her pocket and kept her hand on it the whole way back in case of pickpockets.
She had tried to explain to Florence what had happened to her in that awful room backstage at the Adelphi but had been met with a kind of dumb incomprehension on her friend’s part. Florence still believed that babies were found beneath gooseberry bushes, so to try to explain to her the crude mechanics of what might lead to that gooseberry bush was beyond Freda.