“Kissing?” Florence hazarded. “Mother always says I shouldn’t let a boy kiss me.”
To tell the truth, Freda herself didn’t entirely understand what had happened to her. She just knew she had been crushed by something brutal and that it was horribly unfair.
When they returned to Henrietta Street, Freda instructed Florence to go downstairs to Mrs. Darling and pay the rent straight away, before there was any chance that she could fritter it away.
Freda lay down on the bed. She could have sworn that she could still taste Owen Varley’s blood in her mouth. The day had been too long.
* * *
—
She had intended to rest for only a few minutes, but the next thing she knew she was being woken by the Sunday-morning bells of St. Paul’s church.
There was no sign of Florence. She was not lying in the bed next to her, where she was usually fast asleep when Freda woke, in fact her side of the bed looked unruffled. It was not like Florence to be up and about early, but might she have slipped out to buy breakfast for them both? Freda had sometimes gone out and brought egg rolls back to a sleepy Florence, but Florence had never reciprocated. （“First time for everything,” Vanda would say. “Even for you, dear heart,” Duncan had sniggered. “Back in the Stone Age.”） But then, the church bells reminded her, it was Sunday and the cafés around the market would be closed.
Florence’s coat, which usually hung on a hook on the back of the door, was gone, as was her crocheted beret. They were both unseasonably warm items, but Mrs. Ingram was forever fretting that Florence would catch her death of cold and die of pneumonia in anything less than at least four layers of clothing.
Her clothes remained in the dilapidated wardrobe, her reading matter was still littering the room. Rooting around in the drawer in Florence’s bedside cabinet, Freda found a paper bag of humbugs, the sweets stuck together in a clump, alongside several more packets of “The Sights of London” postcards. What a ridiculous waste of money they represented. Freda wondered if she might be able to peddle them—stand outside the gates of the British Museum and hawk them like a street-seller.
One of the packets was open and missing its full complement of Sights. Freda thought she might use one to write to her mother, or perhaps Cissy. She could tell them that she was having a wonderful time, that her success was growing every day, or perhaps—a more sensible option—she could ask them to send her the money for her train fare home.
She slid Big Ben out of the greaseproof paper packet and a little flurry of white powder, like icing sugar or fine snow, drifted out onto the bed. There was more of the white stuff, Freda discovered, in the unopened packets—the snowy dust fell out when she opened them. Freda licked a finger and pressed it into the powder and then tasted it cautiously, not sure whether to expect the tongue-tingle of sherbet or the death-blow of strychnine. It had an odd taste, both sweet and metallic. Was it talcum powder? But why, Freda wondered, would you put talcum powder in “The Sights of London”？ It wasn’t poison either, as she didn’t drop to the floor in her death throes but instead felt slightly refreshed.
She replaced the postcards in the drawer. Detaching a humbug from the tenacious black-and-white cluster, she popped it in her mouth. Florence loved humbugs. Where was she? Perhaps the white powder was the breadcrumbs she had left as a clue. Might they lead to her, safe in a gingerbread house from which she could eat her way to freedom, one roof tile at a time? She would enjoy that. Gingerbread houses were few and far between in London, though. And, of course, Freda reminded herself, the gingerbread house was a prison, not a place of safety. It was where you were fattened up for the oven by the witch so you could be eaten, like a Christmas goose.
Freda was startled by someone banging loudly on the door. Opening it, she found Mrs. Darling standing with her hand outstretched. “Rent, please,” she said. “But Florence paid the rent last night,” Freda protested. Mrs. Darling was derisive. “In your dreams, dear,” she said.
Mrs. Darling, who knew the footfall of every tenant and who would have made an excellent spy, said that Florence had gone out “about ten o’clock” yesterday evening, “walked right past my door.” What’s more, Mrs. Darling had looked out of the window and seen her walking down the street in the direction of the Strand, “all dolled up.”
Freda felt a little spasm in her heart. Had another Pied Piper, a more malevolent one than Freda, come along and enchanted Florence?
“And then,” Mrs. Darling said, “I saw her get in a car and drive off.”