The first person plural had its effect, as he had known it would.
Crumpet capitulated.
Chapter 21
1977
Twenty Years Before Rob Hillman’s Death
She had always known she was not wanted at home; that was why they had shipped her off to school. Of course they said it was so she could learn how to be a proper lady, but any idiot could tell that was a lie. They hadn’t shipped Derek off, had they? At least not until he was old enough for Eton. But her they had sent away practically as soon as she could talk.
School hadn’t been so bad, at first. There were lots of other girls there in the same boat she was. Their parents obviously didn’t want them, either. And there was lots of stuff to do in London, more than at home. They were always going to the zoo or the museum with the big dinosaur skeletons and the pretty rocks.
The headmistress was awful, of course. There was a rule, somebody said: you couldn’t be a headmistress unless you were such an awful person, nobody would let you do anything else. One of the girls had whispered this in the dorm after lights out; her big brother was at Harrow, and he had written it to her in a letter. They’d all giggled, of course, but then Matron had come in and made them be quiet. That girl with the letter didn’t know how lucky she was. She had a brother, and he cared enough about her to write to her.
Most of the teachers were pretty nice, though. Pippa could tell they all felt sorry for the girls because their parents obviously didn’t give a toss about them. Some of them felt so sorry for you, you could get them to do things they really weren’t supposed to do, like let your chums bring you sweets in the infirmary when you were sick.
So for seven years it wasn’t so bad. Not at school, anyway. The rotten bit came when she had to go home. Because then, no matter how hard she tried, it was, “Phillipa, sit up straight. Phillipa, eat more quietly. Phillipa, there is a spot on your dress; go upstairs at once and change.”
Of course Derek got told off, too, especially when Grandmother saw him looking all scruffy. But there was a difference, somehow. Pip didn’t know how to put it into words. The thing about laps was the only example she could ever think of.
“Grandfather, can I sit in your lap, too, like Derek?”
“May I,” Grandmother’s voice interrupted. “One asks permission by saying ‘May I’, Phillipa, not ‘Can I.’ ”
“Grandfather, may I sit in your lap?”
Grandfather had looked at Grandmother.
Grandmother had said, “No, Phillipa, that is for babies. You are too old now. You must sit in a chair like a young lady.”
But Derek got to be less of a baby, and he still got to sit on Grandfather’s lap. In fact, Derek got bigger and bigger, and still, there he was, sitting on Grandfather’s lap.
One summer day she had gotten up her nerve. “Grandmother, Derek is still sitting on Grandfather’s lap.”
“Don’t be tiresome, Phillipa. You have been told. Sitting on laps is acceptable for babies, for very small children only. You are much too old.”
“But Grandmother, you said I was too old when I was four and Derek was three. But now I’m six and Derek is five. So why isn’t he too old, too?”
She had been sent to her room for three days for “answering back.” They brought her meals to her on a tray, and they let her out only to go to the bathroom.
A month later they had sent her off to school. That was when things started getting better. Except of course for the holidays, when she had to go back home again and watch Derek get all the attention. All the good attention, anyway. The only nice times in the holidays were when she and Derek got to go to Datchworth. Uncle Greg and Aunt Sophy were super.
Then when she was thirteen everything went really horrible. Absolutely putrid. The Hastings School only had grades one through seven. After that one had to go somewhere else. So they sent her to Stiles Academy. It was awful.
To begin with, it was in the middle of nowhere in Kent, and there was nothing to do. No zoos, no dinosaur skeletons, just a lot of new subjects she couldn’t stand and school trips to boring Canterbury. She never did see why all the teachers got so worked up about Canterbury; it was only a dull little town with a stupid big church, that was all.
But worse than school trips that weren’t fun anymore, and teachers that were not nearly as nice as the ones at Hastings, was that the other girls were a lot of cows.
Making friends had been easy at Hastings. Sometimes, of course, one’s friends got to be big fat pains in the bum; then one just stopped going around with them and made some other friends.
But at Stiles, the girls were different. They would be friendly one day and the next day they would turn their backs; learn one’s secrets and then blab them all over the school. One of the older girls started calling her Phillipa simply because she didn’t like it and wanted to be called Pippa. Then somehow Phillipa got shortened to “Philip-ah,” then suddenly people were calling her “Flipper.” Whenever they saw Pippa they would encourage her to jump out of the water and turn a somersault, and promise that if she did it well they would throw her a fish.
They started this in her first year, and they never stopped. In the spring of her second year, shortly after the Easter holiday, she went back to her room one day and saw a big square box on her bed, gift wrapped. The tag on it said Happy Late Birthday. (She had turned fifteen in March. Her grandparents had given her a check.)
She’d had a bad day. Her French teacher had had a go at her for not handing in her prep. Her chem teacher had put her on detention for talking in class. And the last class of the afternoon had been with the history teacher Miss Edgeware, who was always a rat-bag.
So when Pippa saw the prezzie on her bed, she thought it was the only nice thing that had happened to her all day. Afterwards she wondered how she could have been so dumb. She unwrapped it.
It was a beach ball. There was a piece of paper taped to it that said: For balancing on your nose.
That was when she decided to run away. Like her mother, Pippa had a brain behind her long eyelashes, and this decision was not a mindless reaction against unbearable circumstances. It was a calculated attempt to change those circumstances.
She had been trying for the better part of two years to get her grandparents to send her to a different school. Her grandmother always claimed that Stiles Academy was a perfectly good school, full of girls from good families, and Phillipa should be grateful to be there. Of course her grandfather just said that he didn’t know about such things, and Phillipa should try to understand that her grandmother was only trying to do what was best for her and it was always difficult to get used to a new school and eventually she would make some nice friends.
Persuasion had failed. Stronger measures were clearly needed.
She began, very carefully, to plan. The check she’d been given for her birthday was surprisingly large; she suspected that her grandfather had managed somehow to keep her grandmother from knowing the amount until it was too late. There were six weeks before half-term, when she was to be allowed, for the first time, to travel home by herself. Some school authority, probably a teacher, would be down at the tiny local station sorting girls onto the right trains. Pippa would be put onto the two-car slow train that rattled across country to Guildford; there she was to change to a Portsmouth train that would let her off at Haslemere. At Haslemere she would be met by her grandfather if he was feeling brave or by one of the staff if he wasn’t, and driven to Banner House.
Perfect.
She had weeks to plan, and plan she did. Whenever the chance offered, she would go to the library and read the classified advertisements in the London papers. She got the London A to Z and studied the major streets, learned the names of the different boroughs, and memorized the patterns of the Underground. She discovered there were books especially written for students who wanted to visit London and live cheaply. She got hold of one.
She did everything she could to be ready when the time came. She thoug
ht she was. All in all, it was an excellent plan. It was not her fault that everything went wrong.
A few of the other girls were also traveling on the train to Guildford, but she was careful to avoid them; when they got to Guildford station she went into the ladies’ and stayed there for an hour. When she came out there was no one there who could recognize her among the scores of other students from other schools, all scurrying around to make their connections, no one who would know that this particular schoolgirl had no business to be getting onto the train to Waterloo.
At Waterloo she caught the tube across the river to Embankment. Out on the street she looked for a large pharmacy and found one after only a short walk. She bought a can of black spray-on hair dye and a package of proper black dye she could use later when she had found a place to stay. She found a public loo; it stank even worse than the one at Guildford station, but she was excited and determined and she ignored the stench. In one of the stalls she took off her school uniform and stuffed it into her backpack. She used the black spray on her honey-brown hair, getting some on her bra, but that didn’t matter. Then she got out a pair of jeans and a plain blue pullover and put them on. Coming out of the stall she saw herself in the mirror and giggled.
She found a cheap café, ordered tea, and opened her backpack again. She took out a piece of school notebook paper and an envelope she had brought for the purpose, and wrote a note to her grandparents. She’d been working on the wording for weeks.
Dear Grandmother and Grandfather,
By the time you get this you will already know I have run away. Don’t try to find me, you would be wasting your time. I kept trying to tell you Stiles is awful, but you never listen to me. I just can’t stand it any more. You HAVE to let me go to another school. I’ll DIE if I have to stay at Stiles.
She went on to describe what they must do: find a “nicer” school—it had to be in London—enroll her there, and put an ad in the Personals column of the Times saying, Pippa, we agree, followed by the name, address, and phone number of the school. When the ad appeared, she would phone the school to check that it was all arranged, and then she would go directly to the school.
She found a pillar-box and posted the note, smiling to herself as she imagined her grandmother’s reaction. She went back to the tube station and took the District Line east to a shabby neighborhood full of cheap lodgings; there she took out her map and began to make her way toward the first of three hotels she had chosen as possibilities. She didn’t want to stay in a slum, but it would take time before her grandmother gave in, and she simply had to have enough money to last until that happened.
Arriving at the first hotel, she gazed doubtfully up at the dull facade that looked more like a prison than a hotel. Out of its somewhat grimy doors came a girl dressed almost exactly like herself, but (Pippa judged) about four years older than she was. Pippa summoned her courage and asked her, “Are you staying here?”
The girl stopped, looked Pippa up and down, and smiled. “That I am, sweetheart. What do you need?”
She had crooked teeth and frizzy hair and an Australian accent. Pippa asked if it was a decent place to stay, and within a minute the friendly Aussie was looking at Pippa’s short list of hotels.
“No, you don’t want to go to the Hudson. Their prices have doubled since last summer, and they’re not worth it. My God, girl, the Ripley! You go there, you get raped in the halls. Now, this place is a bit of a dump, but the loos are clean and the prices are right. Want to check it out?” she asked, cocking her head back in the direction from which she’d come.
So Pippa had gone with her gratefully. The girl’s name was Janine, and over the next forty-eight hours she became Pippa’s best friend. Janine never questioned Pippa’s dyed hair or her obvious youth or in fact anything else about her; she just showed her how to survive in London on next to no money at all.
On the third day of their acquaintance the two girls went out on a pub-crawl. “You let randy blokes buy your beer, then you slip out when they go to the gents’.” The unaccustomed beer went instantly to Pippa’s head, but Janine kept the “randy blokes” from taking advantage and Pippa had a roaring good time. They came in late and staggered, giggling, toward the elevators. As the last possible second, however, Janine leapt out of the closing doors, crying that she needed to check the desk for a message.
The only other person in the elevator with Pippa was a tall, good-looking boy about Janine’s age who pressed the stop button between the fourth and fifth floors, took a blackjack out of his pocket, and hit Pippa efficiently on the head with it.
It seemed like a long time to Pippa before she became dimly aware, through the pain and darkness, that Janine was calling her name. She came to on the floor of the elevator, looking up at Janine’s horrified face.
“Oi! Pippa! My God, sweetie, what happened?”
Pippa became aware that her head was being cradled by one of Janine’s hands. Also that her head hurt worse than she would have thought possible. Janine was uttering sympathetic noises but the concern remained in her voice. As Pippa managed to sit up just enough to see the contents of her handbag strewn all over the elevator floor, she heard Janine mention the word “hospital.”
“No!” Pippa objected, then winced at the sound of her own voice. In an urgent whisper she repeated, “No! No. The hospital might call the police.”
“Well, of course they would! What’s the matter with—” Janine broke off. “Oh, I see. Poor kid, you don’t want your parents to find you, do you?”
So Janine had figured her out, and had been nice enough not to give her any grief about it. Pippa began to cry at the same time she realized she was about to throw up. She tried to warn her friend, but when she opened her mouth it was too late.
“Jesus, Pippa! Here, have a tissue. Look, luv, I know you don’t want to move but if you want to keep your parents and the police out of it, we’ve got to get you out of here. When the super sees this mess he’s going to think you just got drunk and puked in the lift and he’ll toss you out of the hotel. Unless you tell him you were attacked and then he’ll call the cops and an ambulance and Christ knows what-all. Come on, my room’s closer.”
Pippa soon found herself in Janine’s bed, her face wiped clean with a warm washcloth, her splitting head laid, thankfully, on the pillow, a couple of strong prescription painkillers washed down her throat with some hastily made tea. Janine patted her and soothed her and assured her everything would be all right; eventually the painkillers did their work and Pippa drifted off to sleep, with Janine’s comforting voice assuring her that everything would be better in the morning.
But it wasn’t.
“So I thought you looked all right for the night and I thought I’d go sleep in your room, so I looked for your room key, I knew I’d picked up everything off the floor of the lift and put it back in your bag, of course the bastard took your wallet, but I couldn’t find your room key, so I went up there on the off chance you’d left it unlocked, and Pippa, love, the door was open and your whole room was trashed, he obviously took your key . . .”
Her money. Oh, God, her money!
He had found it, of course, he’d pulled all the drawers out of the tiny bureau and dumped their contents on the floor.
Pippa wept for most of the day, at least when she wasn’t again sleeping off her injuries with the help of Janine’s painkillers. Janine helped her clean up her room; Janine got food from a take-away and brought it up to her; Janine brought her a copy of the Times and didn’t ask why she wanted it; Janine spent the next several days taking care of her more solicitously than Pippa had ever been cared for in her life.
By the time Friday came around, when Pippa needed to pay the next week’s rent or leave the hotel, two things had happened: Pippa had reached the point of panic and desperation (the ad hadn’t appeared in the Times yet) and she had bestowed upon Janine the unquestioning trust that a well-loved child normally bestows on her parents.
Pippa had been working her w
ay tearfully through Janine’s box of tissues for forty-five minutes before the older girl finally said hesitantly, “I don’t know, I wasn’t going to suggest this, you’re a bit young, but I don’t know what else . . .”
Janine had a friend who’d done it last summer to earn some extra cash. The friend had loved it. It had been perfectly safe; they’d treated her well; they’d respected her decisions absolutely about what she did and did not want to do. The friend had worked for six weeks and earned almost four hundred pounds and she got free room and board while she was there. On second thought, however, Pippa was probably too young. . . .
Pippa had to work hard to convince Janine to give her a chance at it; Janine gave in finally because, she admitted, she didn’t really know what else Pippa could do except go home. Pippa shuddered at the thought.
The woman at the house in Mayfair was, surprisingly, a lady. She was as proper as a headmistress, and the right age for one as well, but she dressed more elegantly and spoke less sternly. Her name was Mrs. Cavendish, and she would have been right at home at one of Pippa’s grandmother’s luncheons.
She explained to Pippa that she gave private parties for gentlemen. Most were visiting London on business and did not know anyone in town; Mrs. Cavendish provided “polite, proper, and pretty” young ladies to be their dates at the parties.
Without ever using so vulgar a term as “brothel,” Mrs. Cavendish was able to convey to Pippa most emphatically that her establishment was no such thing. And it was quite safe; the guests were thoroughly vetted and if one of them behaved in an improper manner, said something to one of the girls that made her uncomfortable, he was promptly evicted.
Pippa was younger than the other girls, Mrs. Cavendish admitted, but . . . The woman gave Pippa a confiding smile and said that she wasn’t going to ask any awkward questions, but she herself had run away from home when she was very young. . . .
Thieves Break In Page 18
