Hephzibah shot her a look. “Picture postcards.”
Winnie wilted. “Yes.”
“Very fetching ones.”
Sometimes the moment was presented to you, the window opened just a crack. Winnie forced herself not to be a coward. “Hephzibah. I’m so—” The words came in a rush. “I’m so enormously—sorry.”
That face! Immaculate, the expression smoothing out, like the tide sweeping the sands. Hephzibah said nothing.
Winnie remembered the day Hephzibah had left. Upped and vanished in the night, they said. Yet another runaway. It had infuriated everybody, Winnie included, who’d been left with the task of clearing out Hephzibah’s rubbish and sad, much-mended uniforms.
Dinah King had laughed. “You know how she is,” she’d said. “She’s got dreams. She wants to be onstage.”
They hadn’t asked any questions.
Hephzibah crumpled the program in her hands, tossed it aside. Grabbed her glass of sherry, spilling a little over the brim. “If you weren’t so bloody pious,” she said, “and po-faced, then I shouldn’t get so annoyed with you. Honestly, it’s too bad. Every time you come plodding down to see me you just make me feel beastly. It brings everything up again. You do understand that, don’t you?”
Winnie nodded. “I don’t mean to.”
Hephzibah handed Winnie her own glass. “Here. Put some color in your cheeks. I can’t sit here and watch you sweating all night.”
Winnie grasped it. “Thanks.”
“So, tell me.”
Winnie took a swig. “There’s something delicate we want you to do,” she said, feeling the burn in her throat.
“We?”
“Me and Dinah King.”
Hephzibah’s eyes widened. Winnie raised a palm. “She doesn’t know, Hephzibah. On my honor, she doesn’t know a thing.”
Hephzibah leaned back in her chair.
“Lucky her. Go on, then.”
6
Twenty-three days to go
Alice Parker was running late. She tied her apron, two hasty knots. Tucked her crucifix under her collar and gave herself a quick look in the glass. One month in Park Lane and she’d grown accustomed to wearing a uniform. She’d feared she would hate it, feel pinched at the neck and the wrists. But she slipped into it so easily. This was how a soldier must feel, putting on fatigues. It made her pleasingly anonymous. She didn’t look like herself—she simply looked like a maid.
She adjusted her black armband. Mrs. King had handed it to her on her first day in the house.
“We’re in mourning for the old master,” she’d said evenly.
They didn’t seem mournful. Mr. de Vries was hardly cold in his grave. Yet the new mistress was making plans for a costumed ball, the best of the season, and was in urgent need of a sewing maid. Something about this awed Alice. It seemed like a very wicked thing to do, and that made the job rather more exciting. Was that strange? Her sister thought so. She said as much when she offered Alice the job.
“Don’t be a queer fish about things, all right? I need someone sensible to keep their eyes on the mistress. Someone invisible. Got that?” said Mrs. King.
Half sister was the correct moniker. Suitable, really, since they were only really half-alike. Fourteen years between them, and the only thing they ever shared was their mother. “All right, Dinah,” said Alice.
“It’s Mrs. King to you,” said Mrs. King. “No preferential treatment, understand?”
Alice made herself meek. “Of course not.”
Mrs. King looked doubtful. “You understand what I’m asking? You do get how a big job works?”
“Perfectly,” Alice said. “And I fancy a change.”
Mrs. King raised an eyebrow. “Are you in trouble?”
Trouble, trouble. Alice hated the word. It circled her, snared her, followed her all the time. “Trouble?” she said. “How would I get myself into trouble?”
Her sister studied her without blinking, a force stronger even than Alice’s own.
“Very well. Report to the house on Monday morning. I’ll smooth the way for you. Breathe a word to anyone that you know me and I’ll skin you alive.” Mrs. King put out her hand. It was sheathed in a calfskin glove, ivory colored. It was lovely. “Do we have a deal?”
Mother had small hands, too. It had been Alice’s job to button Mother’s gloves, keep her tidy, properly put together. Mrs. King had abandoned those chores long ago.
Alice congratulated herself for not giving anything away. For of course she was in trouble, about as deep as you could get. Sometimes it made the bile rise right up in her throat. All she’d wanted was to make a decent living. Shop girls looked so crisp and composed. She’d yearned to be one. Father had trained her behind the haberdasher’s bench, and she knew she was skilled with a needle, but she wasn’t about to be sweated out for nothing. She could sketch a garment faster than most girls could brush their hair. Even her plain work was tighter, more delicate, more perfect than any pattern. She swiped all the illustrated papers she could find, inhaled the advertisements. Alice studied the popular fashions as if under a microscope, watching the lines shifting each season: lengthening, narrowing, tilting forward at the bust, sweeping around the hips. Secretly, she longed to design her own. But she needed to be apprenticed. And that required cash.
It wasn’t hard to get a loan. She had her wits about her—she knew all about sharks. There were women in the neighborhood who’d pawned everything they owned and still couldn’t pay off their debts. Alice scorned them. She went to a woman called Miss Spring, who kept a very plain and respectable house on Bell Lane. Miss Spring had a soft voice, and gentle manners, and kept immaculate oilcloths. She listened to Alice’s request, took scrupulous notes, and offered an advance against future wages—calculated at seven-and-six a week, no need for sureties, all agreed on note of hand alone.
Alice spent six months as a machinist before she made it to the workroom bench, and she only made three shillings a week. Even the experienced girls were only making five-and-six. Alice watched her debt rising slowly, like a tide, pooling around her ankles. She visited Miss Spring’s house and found it boarded up. But the men who took the repayments still turned up every fortnight, teeth gleaming. She met them on the lane at the end of the road, where Father couldn’t see them.
“Next week,” she said. “I’ll catch up next week.”
“Of course, miss,” they said, all courtesy. “You take your time.”
It would have been better if they’d got out a lead pipe to beat her, if they’d sent her screaming down the lane. Then she could have gone running for help without feeling any shame. As it was, she had the upside-down feeling of being sucked deeper and deeper into something she couldn’t control, something that presaged disaster—for there was only one way things could go with a bad debt. She told no one.
The collectors gave off a strange smell: powdered chalk mixed with gardenias. The scent stayed in her nostrils late at night. She wasn’t sleeping well. Saying her prayers didn’t soothe her in the least.
Protection was what she needed. And Park Lane was perfect. She couldn’t have hoped for somewhere bigger or more fortified if she tried. She left the department store without even giving notice. She gave the wrong forwarding address to Father. Best to unstitch herself from the neighborhood altogether until she could get her cash in hand.