The Runaway Daughter

by Joanna Rees

  She passed signs to the Metropolitan Railway and saw people disappearing down steps into the pavement to the Underground, then stared up at a hoarding advertising a show at Drury Lane. Wasn’t that a fancy theatre in Covent Garden? She would love to go there, she thought. And she would do so! From now on, she could do whatever she wanted.

  She was jostled along in the crowd on the pavement to the queue for the taxis and couldn’t help feeling how purposeful everyone seemed to be, as two large women in black dresses and with grand plumes in their hats bustled by with two dogs on a lead, followed by a boy pushing a wooden cart filled with clanking milk churns, and then three gentlemen, all with walking canes. The one with the busy moustache tipped his hat at her.

  All of these lives, she thought, all these people with so much purpose – they made her feel so insignificant. Darton Hall suddenly seemed like a very, very long way away.

  She was nearing the front of the queue and wondered whether she should get into a taxi. But to go where? She didn’t have a clue where to head for in London, or where to stay.

  Giving herself time to think, she left the queue and walked along to where a boy was selling newspapers, but it occurred to her now that she herself might well make the news soon. She imagined the headlines, and the boy yelling them out: ‘Heir to Darton Mills Fortune Found Dead. Sister Missing.’

  She stopped still and scanned the newspapers for those very words, her heart in her throat, before reassuring herself that it was far too soon for the scandal to have gone to press. But it wouldn’t be long. With the high level of resent amongst the mill workers about their working conditions, any misfortune that befell the hated Darton family would most likely be celebrated and gossiped about in the newspapers.

  Her attention was caught by a report on the front page of the Daily News. The word flashed out at her, as if she’d been snapped by a press photographer: ‘MURDER’.

  Clement’s bloody face flashed before her, like another pop of the photographer’s bulb. Is that what the newspapers would say? When they found out what had happened to him? Because she knew for a fact that they wouldn’t understand that she’d had to do what she’d done. That she’d had no choice. But nobody had ever believed her in the past. Not over Clement.

  She imagined herself in the dock, her hands cuffed, the judge stern in his white wig, his sentence unforgiving. But if she were faced with the same situation again, she’d do the same thing. Over and over. Of that she was sure.

  Even so, she was aware now that the knowledge of it – her crime – was, with each passing hour, expanding into a thing. Something that was difficult to label: guilt, terror, disbelief – at all the decisions she’d made and everything she’d left behind. But, mostly, a sense of righteous indignation. Clement had got what he’d deserved. Hadn’t he? If she hadn’t have done what she’d done, he’d have tormented her forever. It was a choice: his life or hers.

  Don’t think about it. It’s gone. It’s over, she told herself, forcing herself to keep moving.

  ‘You looking for something, Miss?’ the boy on the newsstand asked. He had a strange cockney accent and she felt startled that he’d addressed her, but saw that he was only being friendly.

  ‘Oh, no. Well, perhaps a hotel.’

  ‘Try the Midland Grand. Just up there,’ he said, nodding along the street to an imposing red-brick building with a clock tower. ‘All the smart people go there.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she mumbled and he nodded, before hollering out, ‘Extra! Extra! Read all about it.’

  5

  The Grand Hotel

  Anna walked intrepidly up the stone steps of the large hotel, catching the eye of the doorman in his smart grey livery. He was older than her, but not by much, and he was handsome, she realized. She wasn’t used to seeing such clean-shaven, groomed men and she felt herself flushing as he smiled at her.

  ‘G’day. Welcome to the Midland Grand,’ he said, tipping his hat.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Can I help you with your bag?’

  ‘Oh no. Thank you. It’s not heavy.’

  But just then she tripped up the last step and he caught her elbow as she stumbled. She recovered quickly, feeling embarrassed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologized.

  ‘Don’t be.’

  He steered her inside the wooden revolving door and told her to walk straight on, and she had to suppress the urge to laugh nervously. A revolving door! The doorman caught her eye as he came in after her and grinned.

  ‘You want to go again?’

  ‘No, no, thank you,’ she said, although another turn would be fun.

  ‘I’ll find you the bellhop,’ he said, standing on tiptoe, as if looking for someone.

  Her attention was caught now by the inside of the hotel. A vast staircase rose from the prettily patterned tiles and split into two, gliding upwards, all lit by windows that must be at least fifty feet tall. The walls were painted red and there were large urns filled with sumptuous ferns.

  The foyer was busy – a group of older women heading for the lounge area, waiters passing by carrying silver trays aloft. There was the faint sound of a string quartet playing.

  ‘I am meeting my aunt,’ she explained to the doorman, hoping her lie sounded plausible, ‘but she’s been delayed. So I need a room. A single room. Just for the night.’

  ‘Very good, Miss,’ the doorman said, as if this were a perfectly reasonable explanation. ‘I can’t see the bellhop. Follow me and I’ll take you over to reception.’

  He made a path easily through the crowd, carrying her carpet bag in front of him, but Anna almost had to run to keep up with him. When they got to the imposing reception desk, he summoned one of his colleagues to attend to her. Then he withdrew, tipping his cap again.

  ‘I’m Wilf,’ he told her. ‘If you need anything – anything at all during your stay – I can help,’ he said and his smile was so friendly that she grinned back. Maybe London wasn’t going to be so difficult after all.

  The man at the reception desk made a show of checking his bookings, before agreeing to find her a room. To stay just one night was going to cost her one-third of what precious little money she had, but it was too late to back out.

  ‘If you’d sign in here,’ the man said, twisting a heavy leather-bound book towards her. But when he looked up at her, she saw a narrowing in his eyes, as if he’d seen right through her.

  Unsettled by his scrutiny, she wrote her name – Anna Darton – and her address, almost without thinking; and then, realizing her mistake, she hesitated, but it was too late to cross them out. The man gave her a quizzical stare, but didn’t question her any further.

  She felt her cheeks burning as she followed the liveried concierge into a lift and then along the carpeted corridor on the third floor. Why hadn’t she written ‘Verity Casey’? She was supposed to be all-new, she remembered, but at the first test she’d failed.

  The concierge opened a door into a comfortable-looking bedroom and placed her shabby carpet bag on a wooden suitcase stand, before tipping his cap. He didn’t meet her eye and, as he backed out, she wondered whether she should have tipped him.

  ‘Wait!’ she said, delving in her pocket. She pulled out a note. ‘Here,’ she said, handing it over.

  ‘It’s far too much, Miss,’ he said, looking surprised.

  It was, but she didn’t have any change and she couldn’t exactly ask the boy for any. So instead she swallowed the rising feeling that she was way out of her depth and decided that, on this occasion, she could be generous. She waved her hand as if such tips were commonplace.

  The boy grinned and left. Finally alone, she shut the door and leant back against it, letting out a long breath.

  The room was small with a tiny tiled fireplace, and a mantel above it with an oval mirror to reflect the light from the window. By the window was a wooden bed with a light-blue silk eiderdown and a prettily upholstered chair to match. Compared to her bedroom at home, it was gloriously mo
dern and comfortable. A wooden rail housed a set of folded monogrammed towels. Just for her.

  She stared at the room with its fancy cornicing, wondering what she should do now. And all too soon her mind was buzzing. She’d done it. She was really here, in London. In a grand hotel, where she’d given an equally grand tip. It made her feel both flamboyant and deliciously reckless.

  She grabbed a towel, checked both ways along the corridor and then walked along to the communal bathroom. She locked the door and stood by the large porcelain sink, staring at herself in the mirror, feeling that her blue eyes belonged to a stranger. How different she was from the child she’d been just days ago. It was as if she’d grown up ten years overnight, and her face showed it.

  She turned away from her reflection and changed quickly out of her clothes, washing herself in the bath and then putting on her smartest blue dress. It was such a relief to shed the layers of clothes.

  She went back to her room and took down her long hair, brushing out the knots. Her hair still smelt vaguely of home and she quickly plaited and pinned it. Then, satisfied with her appearance, she looked out of the small window at the other windows facing the back courtyard of the hotel and decided to be brave. Now that she’d come this far, she had to explore. Who knew how much time she had before someone caught her out? And when they did, she wanted to have some memories – good ones – to show for her time on the run.

  Feeling too nervous to use the lift alone, she shrugged on her coat and walked slowly down the staircase, admiring the art on the walls and the smooth wooden handrail. She passed several other guests and wondered what they made of her. Did they see Verity Casey, a smart young woman who might fit into London society, or Anna Darton, a frightened girl who had committed a terrible crime? She hoped it was the former.

  ‘Your first time in London then, Miss?’ the doorman, Wilf, asked, as she stepped outside again.

  She nodded, bowing her head down. Was it that obvious?

  ‘How far is it to Piccadilly Circus?’ she asked.

  ‘Take a bus. From just there,’ he said, pointing to the omnibus stop. ‘You’ll see all the sights, that way.’

  6

  Eros

  Anna was used to hearing her father’s suspicious ranting about the ‘flagrantly immoral’ types in London, but looking at everything from the top of the omnibus – the sheer colour and magnificence of the city – had resolved everything in her mind. She was going to be a flagrantly immoral type herself. As soon as possible.

  She was so absorbed in looking at all the people and buildings that she only just made it down the outside steps of the omnibus in time to get off at the bottom of Regent Street.

  She stood on the pavement, taking in the honking motorcars, the statue of Eros and the curved foyer of the Criterion Theatre. She’d only ever seen Piccadilly Circus on a cigarette card that she’d stolen from Clement’s bureau, but now she wanted to pinch herself. She was actually doing this. She was actually here.

  Pigeons applauded themselves into flight and a tiny, foolish part of her felt they might be congratulating her, too. Because she realized now that she hadn’t actually expected to get away. Not really. Not disappearing like this. It filled her with a strange, nervous euphoria.

  She stared at a pair of women draped in fox and mink furs, and at a small child in a fawn three-piece suit and matching cap, skipping along beside a nanny pushing an unwieldy navy-blue pram. A veteran soldier limped along on crutches. The poor man. Another brave soul wounded by that dreadful war. Why had it taken all the good men, and spared monsters like Clement?

  She crossed the road and went right up to the statue of Eros, her dark thoughts about Clement unsettling her so much that she shuddered. Perhaps if she touched the famous statue, it would bring her luck. Perhaps it would make Verity Casey real. She willed it to be true, as she walked up the steps and reached out her trembling hand to the curved, blackened brass. The fish-heads in the intricate design eyed her coldly.

  She trailed her hand along the smooth edge of the trough, walking round the statue, reading its inscription: The strong sympathies of his heart and the great powers of his mind . . .

  Clement’s strong heart had stopped now. And his sharp mind was dead, too. Caught by the enormity of these granite-like facts, Anna stared up at Eros’s bow against the grey clouds. She’d done that to him. Her brother was gone forever. Because of her. And suddenly an image of Clement as a little boy giggling at Christmas, with the cream from the trifle around his mouth, made her gulp and caused tears to spring to her eyes.

  A light drizzle was starting to fall and people were hurrying along the pavement, putting up their umbrellas. From her vantage point, each black disc seemed like a personal rebuff, a reminder of her guilt and hopelessness.

  Now the heady euphoria she’d felt earlier popped, and the facts seemed to slap her one by one, as tangible as the raindrops. She was on the run from everything, and from everyone she knew. A lone fugitive in this terrifying metropolis, with just two pounds to her name and not a friend in the world. Terrible things could happen to a girl like her. She had assumed that she’d land on her feet, but what if she now fell flat? What then?

  She stared up at the tip of Eros’s bow, her face in the rain, and made a wish: Please, someone . . . please save me.

  But nothing happened. Anna waited for a full five minutes, feeling the drizzle getting heavier and soak through the wool of her coat, willing it on like a punishment. She knew she should find somewhere to shelter, but somehow she was rooted to the statue. At least standing here, in the centre of London, she could imagine that, momentarily, she was the calm in the eye of a storm. Were she to step away, then a whirlwind of trouble and indecision would surely sweep her up.

  She sneezed loudly, then shivered, her teeth chattering. She remembered the train now, and how she’d spent the night feeling frozen to her core.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, out loud. ‘Pull yourself together.’

  What would Martha tell her to do? No doubt she’d prescribe a hot meal and a good night’s sleep. Yes, that was probably the best solution. She caught the bus back to the hotel and was disappointed that her new friend, Wilf, wasn’t on the door. She had an early supper of steak-and-kidney pie and beans, alone in the dining room. It was delicious, but she couldn’t help calculating how expensive each mouthful was.

  As she ate, she tried to focus on the events that had happened before she’d fled Darton Hall, but they seemed to be blurring in her memory, as if they were being smudged out.

  When she thought of home now, she could only see the blurred grey blocks of Darton Hall in the evening rain. She remembered everything that had preceded her flight as if it had happened to someone else in another time. How she’d argued with her father about Clement, and he’d slapped her face and sent her to her room, where she’d flung open the musty drawers of her tallboy and pulled her clothes into her carpet bag on the bed, tears coursing down her face.

  She wondered now what would have happened if she’d managed to leave just with that resolve. Whether her anguished fury would have held. Or whether she’d have crumbled and slunk back to the Hall, before anyone had noticed she’d gone. Whether she’d have succumbed to the pattern that had shaped her life: fear and guilt leading to remorse and penance.

  But instead Clement had intercepted her flight, and her resolve had turned into a necessity.

  And now it was done. She’d gone for good.

  After dinner, she walked slowly around the public areas of the hotel, marvelling that there was a Ladies’ Smoking Room and wishing that she had the nerve to go into it. There was a lecture going on in one of the large rooms and a cello recital in another, but she couldn’t bring herself to step into the crowd, for fear of being noticed. Yet she longed for someone to talk to – anyone who might stop her being alone with her conscience. But everyone ignored her. And later, as she crawled into the single bed, Anna felt so alone that she cried herself to sleep.

  7
/>   The Waitress

  Anna woke up shivering, although the room was quite warm, the maid having lit the fire last night. At first she thought she was still in Darton Hall and then she remembered and leapt out of bed, as if she could distance herself from the terrible sense of guilt. She dressed quickly, counting her money and realizing that she was going to have to make a plan.

  She hadn’t been thinking straight yesterday, but now it seemed glaringly obvious: if her parents had alerted the police and they worked out that she might have got on a train, then surely they’d come straight to the nearest hotel and find her. And there would be the evidence: her name in the book.

  No, there was only one thing for it. She had to find somewhere else to stay. And fast. And that wasn’t all; she was going to have to find some kind of a job. It had never occurred to her that existing in the city would be so expensive. She had no qualms about getting her hands dirty. She’d learnt all about the young society women who had worked at Guy’s Hospital during the war, and she knew that she wouldn’t have a problem ‘mixing with the masses’, as her mother would say. But how?

  At breakfast, she sat at the small table between two leafy aspidistras, looking at the other diners, wondering why her head was aching so much. She caught the eye of several people, wondering if any of them might take pity on her and talk to her, but they resolutely continued to mind their own business.

  She felt overwhelmed by the choices she was going to have to make by herself, without any guidance. She tried to remember her pledge to live impetuously, but it was so much harder than she’d imagined, now that she was here.

  She’d been so desperate to get away, but now the impulsive decisions she’d made – one after the other, in the last forty-eight hours – suddenly felt overwhelming. And foolish, too. There’d been no plan. There still wasn’t a plan.