by Tania Crosse
‘Oh, Daddy, why did you never tell me?’ Jessica said gently, placing her hand on her father’s arm.
‘And I’m sorry for what I said, Mr Braithwaite,’ Hillie apologised. ‘I understand how that must make you feel. But you’ve got to let go of Jessie some time. She’s an adult, and needs an adult’s life.’
‘And I promise that I will protect her to the very last breath of my body.’ Patrick was finally able to enter the conversation, and his reserved, liquid voice seemed to pour oil on the troubled waters around them. ‘I appreciate that I come from a totally different culture, but that is no reason why we cannot integrate with one another. I love your daughter, sir, and I would lay down my life for her.’
Hillie saw Charles stare up at Patrick, and the anger on his face began to dissolve.
‘Mr Braithwaite, why don’t we all go back to the café and discuss this over a cup of tea?’ Hillie suggested, leaping in while the going appeared good. ‘I know this is all quite momentous and a big shock for you. But if only you’d get to know Patrick, you’d see for yourself what a good man he is.’
‘W-w-well—’
‘Oh, thank you, Daddy!’ Jessica danced around him as he took a reluctant step in the direction of the tables.
‘God knows what your mother is going to say about this—’
‘Then you’re going to have to persuade her, aren’t you, Daddy?’
‘I haven’t given you permission to… to… see this… this gentleman yet—’
‘But you will, though, Daddy, won’t you?’ Jessica begged, eyebrows knitted with expectancy.
‘Oh, dear, what have I let myself in for?’
Hillie stopped, and watched as the three figures made their way over to where her own cup of tea was going cold on the little table. They didn’t need her. She’d probably only put her foot in it. Had her argument with Charles Braithwaite made any difference? She wasn’t sure. Best to let them get on with it without her.
She turned, and began to wend her way towards the Sun Gate entrance to the park. Back to the empty flat and the rest of her lonely life.
*
‘Right, come on, my girl, you’re not spending the day working!’ Gert declared, grabbing Hillie’s arm as she walked down the street. ‘It’s supposed to be a bleeding, I mean, flipping public holiday. And you’re gonna spend it with us! The king’s gonna be out on the balcony at Buck Palace later on, and we’re all gonna be there to wave back!’
‘Oh, but—’ Hillie protested, trying to break away.
‘Oh, but nothing,’ Gert insisted. ‘It ain’t every day the king has a silver jubilee. Me and Rob and Belinda are going, and Kit’s not on shift so he’s coming, too.’
‘But what about—?
‘Luke and Joan and Trixie can come if they want, but Harold’ll just have to be a dad for once, and look after the younger ones himself. Not having your day being spoilt by having to trail them along.’
‘But what about your mum and dad?’
‘There’s a street party round the corner. They said they’d rather go to that than get squashed in the crowds. So, what you waiting for, kiddo?’
‘Oh, well.’ Hillie’s heart began to dance as the idea took root. ‘I’ll just go and tell Harold, and see if Luke or the others want to come.’
‘Just the older ones, mind,’ Gert called after her. ‘And tell old Harold to jump in the lake if he tries to stop you!’
A few moments later, she all but did just that. She’d only agreed to come in after her work at Price’s, she’d told him firmly. Just because it was an extra public holiday, it made no difference. He couldn’t expect her to work all day, and she’d be back in time to cook the evening meal as usual. So saying, she stormed out of the door, Luke and Joan seizing the moment and leaping after her, while Harold stood in the kitchen, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish.
‘You did it, then?’ Gert chortled, beaming from ear to ear.
‘Yup!’ Hillie cried, feeling inspired by her fight with Harold. ‘Trixie didn’t want to come, though. She actually made him promise to take them all to the park instead.’
‘So, you’re coming, too!’ Kit grinned, as he and Rob and Belinda emerged from Number Eight. ‘I’m so pleased. It’ll do you good. And it’s such a lovely day for the beginning of May.’
His smiling eyes gazed down on her, and as he held out his hand, something warm, like liquid honey, seemed to slither through her veins. She hesitated just a moment, the sensation taking her by surprise. And as she took his hand, it just felt like the good and right and natural thing to do.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘Oh, damn, it’s starting to drizzle. Don’t want me new hairdo getting wet.’
Hillie watched as Gert patted her frizzy halo that she’d just had cut into a shorter, more sophisticated style. Hillie considered that it rather suited her, and that it would be more apt for the new, middle-class housewife role her dear friend would be taking up in a year’s time. Life without Gert. Hillie could scarcely imagine it, and it lay heavily on her heart.
It was lunchtime at Price’s, and many of the workers had flocked to the canteen. Others who lived within a few minutes’ walk, had popped home to eat. Unlike the gloriously sunny day they’d spent in London for the king’s jubilee the previous month, the air was chilly on this late June day and the sky overcast, so not many had ventured out to the narrow strip of the company’s wharfs alongside the river.
‘You’d better go in, then,’ Hillie forced herself to chuckle. ‘Can’t have it getting ruined.’
‘You not coming, then?’
‘Think I’ll stay out here a bit longer. Get a few more minutes’ fresh air. See you back at the grindstone,’ Hillie finished with a mock grimace.
‘OK. But don’t get soaked.’
‘I won’t.’
Some of the wharf men were still lingering outside in small groups, mainly puffing at their cigarettes and breathing out little clouds of smoke. They were going to get wet anyway if the rain came down more heavily, so Hillie supposed the drizzle meant nothing to them. But almost everyone else had retreated inside, and Hillie found herself virtually alone.
She stared out over the vast, grey width of the Thames as it flowed down towards the series of bridges on its way to the City of London and the docklands beyond, before reaching the estuary and the open sea. Wild and free. Hillie envied the majestically moving water, but life wasn’t like that, was it? Everyone had ties. Unless you were someone like Jimmy. Was that why she’d taken to him once she’d seen past his cocky exterior? Because of his devil-may-care attitude that had made her feel unshackled?
But it had been her desire to tie him down, her dream of a home, a cottage in the country, that had killed him. Justice had been done. Both Jackson and his henchman had been tried during the previous fortnight, and both sentenced to the gallows, Jackson for giving the orders, and his heavy for carrying them out. The trials had been horrendous, but Kit had been there, buoying Hillie up, comforting her. Giving evidence himself, although it hardly seemed necessary, as the policemen had arrived with him at the lock-up, just in time to witness the murder as well. It was over. But none of it would bring Jimmy back.
Ah, Jimmy. She remembered that summer lunchtime, three years ago now, when he’d started chatting her up. At this very spot. What a lot of water had passed by in the river since then. And now he was dead.
Hillie could feel the constriction in her throat. Best not dwell on it. Better to rejoin her friends in the canteen. Gert, Belinda. Other of her workmates.
The site of the factory was split into two by Battersea Creek. On this side, where Hillie and Gert worked in the candle-packing shed near to the site’s border with York Road, the land was so densely developed that each building abutted the next. So the only way to return to the front, where the canteen also stood, was to weave one’s way through the various worksheds. It felt odd and vaguely unnerving with just a few workers keeping an eye on things here and there while ever
yone else was at lunch. But Hillie was so familiar with the place, not to mention lost in her own morose thoughts, that she scarcely noticed it.
‘You thought any more about my proposal, then?’
Harold’s voice at her shoulder made her jump sky-high. Her swift glance took in the vast interior of one of the boiling houses where molten candlewax bubbled gently in ranks of heated vats. The place appeared deserted. Hillie felt a shiver of fear pass through her, but her contempt for her stepfather overrode it.
‘And what proposal might that be?’ she demanded frostily.
‘You know very well. I’ve asked you enough times. To come back and live with us.’
‘And I’ve told you enough times that you need your brains testing. That’s if you’ve got any,’ Hillie snapped, trying to ignore him and walk on.
But Harold caught her arm and wrenched her round to face him. ‘No need to be like that,’ he snarled. But then he seemed to change his attitude. ‘Come home,’ he cajoled. ‘Where you belong. So I can look after you.’
Hillie was stunned. ‘You? Look after me?’
‘Course. I’m not so bad really, you know. Your mother loved me, and—’
‘Loved you? She was terrified of you. It was you who drove her to what she did. And when it comes down to it, you’re the one to blame for everything. Mum, Jimmy—’
‘Don’t give me that. Your mother only had herself to blame. And as for that little runt, I didn’t tell him to get mixed up with some gang, did I?’ Harold spat, his eyes blazing. But then his expression hardened from rage to something disturbing Hillie couldn’t identify. ‘Oh, please come back, Hillie. I need you, really I do. I miss your mum so much, and you’re so much like her.’
He came up so close, his fingers digging painfully into her arms, he was holding her so tightly. His nose was almost touching hers, and her eyes narrowed in disgust. For what the hell was he hinting at?
‘Well, I’m not coming back, so get used to it,’ she grated. ‘So kindly let go of me!’
‘Oh, come on, Hilda.’ He began to pant now, and she could see globules of sweat forming on his upper lip. ‘I want you to come home.’
‘Well, I’m not. All I’m doing is for my family, not you. I hate you, so get off me!’
She watched the pleading lines on his face move into a mask of fury. For a split second, he was off guard, and she used that moment to try to break free, managing to rake the fingernails of one hand down his face as her only means of defence. Harold winced, letting go of one of her arms to feel his cheek. But he held onto her tight with the other and flung her back against the wall with such force that her head was thrown back and cracked against the bricks. Black stars danced across her vision and the silence in the workshed rang in her ears. Dear God, where was everybody? Surely someone must come soon? She wasn’t going to be beaten up by him again!
She forced her eyes open. Harold had her pinned up against the wall with the weight of his body pressing against hers. She could feel his heavy breath hot on her neck as he began to slobber his lips over her skin. Outrage stung through her and, somehow, she found the strength to free one of her hands and yank on his hair. His head went back, distracting him enough so that she was able to bring her knee up hard where it hurt most.
He gave a yelp of pain and half stepped backwards, bent over as he nursed his crotch. Hillie was too transfixed to move, but an instant later, her feet were running as she blundered down the workshed. Her pulse was pounding, pounding, in her skull, blinding her with panic. She stumbled, went down painfully on her knees. Dear God, the man must be deranged! She dragged herself up again, staggered on. Where the hell was everyone?
Nearly there. The doors.
Lungs snatching at the air.
Harold must have gone round the other way and now he sprang out in front of her from behind one of the vats.
‘You bitch!’ he yelled. And slammed a backhander across her face that sent her reeling.
She saw him standing there, hands on hips, gloating, drooling, his eyes glazed in demented fury. Hillie turned and fled back the way she’d come, dodging in and out of the maze of hot vats as she tried to outwit him, hiding here, his leering face again there, slip past, run, skid around another vat.
Someone help me, please!
His hand shot out from between two vats and grabbed her shoulder. Was that a scream that lodged in her throat? But the momentum as she was swung round pulled Harold off balance, and she was away again. Scooting down between the rows of steaming vats, leaping over buckets and jugs and avoiding protruding taps. So hot. How did the workers in their overalls stand it in here?
‘What the hell’s going on, mate?’
‘It’s that odd bloke from moulding, ain’t it? Gone bleeding beserk. Chasing some kid.’
‘Not any kid. It’s his daughter. Come on!’
Shouting. Footfall. Too late, too late. Which way now? This way? That way? Breath burning.
‘You won’t bloody get away from me!’
He was behind her. She spun round. In her mindless panic, she’d run into a corner. No escape as he stood there. Leering, grinning. Get away, away. Only one way, up the ladder hooked over the rim of the giant vat. Feet sliding on the rungs, slippery with candle grease.
Gasp as she reached the top. The lid was partly open. She couldn’t get across! Below her simmered the sea of molten wax.
Slowly, she turned to gaze with petrified eyes over her shoulder. Harold was climbing the ladder behind her. Rung after rung. She saw him put one foot on the same rung as hers. Reach out to grab her as he heaved himself upwards.
This was it. She shut her eyes just as she had once before. She was back in the shadows of the lock-up beneath the railway arches. Didn’t want to see it coming. Kit, oh, Kit. Where was Kit?
Harold would drag her down. Throw her to the floor. Mad with anger and lust and revenge for not being his.
No, she wouldn’t let it happen!
She flung herself sideways off the ladder onto the concrete just as he launched himself at her.
Pain in her chest as she landed. No breath to call for help. But someone was shouting, yelling. Man in white overalls and rubber boots shinning up the ladder. Grabbed the pair of legs flailing in the air at the top.
‘Help me get him out!’
Another man in overalls standing at the bottom of the ladder, reaching up. And then they pulled out the grotesque figure, head, arms, torso dripping thick, pale wax. Bubbling, wheezing from its mouth as it gasped for breath.
‘Get an ambulance!’
Hillie peeled herself from the floor. She could barely breathe from the agony in her ribcage. How was she supposed to get to the office to call an ambulance? She couldn’t move.
But as she strained to lift her head, there were other white-clad forms returning from their lunch break.
‘I’ll go!’ one of them called, and he ran off.
The writhing monster was laid on the floor at the far side of the ladder. It looked like something from a horror film, Hillie’s shocked brain mused. It was horrible. Inhuman. Gurgling. Sucking sound as it struggled to breathe.
Oh, Jimmy. Not again.
‘Hillie!’ a high voice squealed.
And there was Gert, face white with horror. Dear, good Gert. Everything would be all right now.
Hillie looked up. Went to draw in a deep breath. But her head swam, the room spun and darkness closed in.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘D’you think you’ll be OK to go back to work when they said?’
Hillie was following Luke down the hallway to see him off to the factory. ‘I’m sure I will,’ she said to his back. ‘My ribs are starting to feel better already. I might even go back earlier.’
‘What?’ Luke turned round to face her. ‘’Cos we need the money? Oh, Hill, you shouldn’t do that. Why don’t you call in the Means Test man?’
‘You must be joking,’ Hillie scoffed. ‘You have to have sold almost every stick of furniture and th
e clothes off your back before they’ll give you anything. Don’t worry. We can manage. And we’ve got the compensation from Price’s.’
‘That won’t go far, though.’
‘But we were lucky to get what we did. They didn’t have to give us anything. It wasn’t their fault Harold lost his temper like that. Or that the chap supposed to be keeping an eye on things over lunch happened to pop to the lav just then.’
‘Sod’s law that was.’
Hillie raised her eyebrows in disapproval at his language. But she supposed Luke was growing up fast, so she chose to ignore his remark. ‘Anyway, it all happened so quickly, who knows if it would’ve made any difference. Now you get off to work, and don’t worry about things. I mightn’t earn as much as he did, but I won’t be spending half of it down the pub.’
‘Better not!’ Luke grinned now, going out into the street. ‘Ta-ta, then. See you tonight. But…’ He hesitated after only a few steps and turned back to her. ‘D’you think it was wrong of me not to have gone to the hospital with Dad?’
Hillie closed her lips in a moment’s reflection. She’d been taken to the hospital in the same ambulance as Harold, and had watched him struggling for breath, his airways severely damaged, confused and semiconscious with shock, his face raw and peeling. It had come as no surprise that they told her his heart had stopped and he’d died soon after he got there. Watching him had been a horrible experience, one that she wouldn’t have wished on Luke, and now she put her hands firmly on his shoulders.
‘No. And I don’t want you ever feeling guilty about it. He probably wouldn’t have known you were there, anyway. So let’s hear no more about it and get on with our own lives now we’re free of him.’
Luke nodded thoughtfully, then his young face spread into a smile. ‘Thanks, Hill. You’re the best big sister anyone could have.’
