Now I was in a district that I didn’t know well and didn’t want to. Shabby doorways were hung with strips of beads or gaped like broken mouths, and the tiles leading into them were broken and dirty. Some had small handwritten signs beside the doorbells. ‘Jenny’. ‘Roseanna’. I checked the street name against the address stamped on the slip of paper I was clutching and turned reluctantly down what looked like little more than a dead end. There I saw the shop. Citylight Prints was a dingy place in a dingy little street. The glass of the windows was covered with brown paper so that you couldn’t see in, which didn’t bode well, and the flaking shop sign had once been blue but now had hardly any colour at all.
‘You all right, love?’
I turned to see a striking-looking woman with strawberry-blonde hair twisted up in the French style, standing in a shop doorway on the other side of the thin lane, tapping ash from a cigarette in a long holder, the sort they used before the War. ‘You going in there?’
‘I think so.’
She took a drag. ‘You don’t look the type. You do know what it is?’ I gazed at the painted sign. ‘You don’t, do you?’
‘A printer’s?’
She hooted. ‘That’s what they call it. They do print stuff, there, love. Photos. Special type of photos.’ I could tell what she was getting at. But why would Lorelei want to get that strange negative developed there? ‘Sure you want to go in?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘If you say so.’ She pointed towards the shop with her cigarette. ‘But if he gives you any gyp, you come out to see me.’
‘I’ll do that. Thanks.’ I strode over and pushed through the strings of beads in the doorway.
It was a dimly lighted den, and the sole customer was a man in shabby clothes flicking through one of a set of boxes that lined the walls. As soon as he saw me he immediately left. I could hear a printing press thundering away in a back room. Behind the counter stood a young man, with little pictures tattooed on his neck in green-turning ink. He looked me slowly up and down, making me intensely uncomfortable, and wiped his mouth. ‘You looking for work?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘What, then?’
‘I want a print from a negative.’
He shrugged. ‘All right. Let’s have it.’ I handed it over. ‘How big?’
‘What’s the standard size?’
‘Whatever takes your fancy. Ten by eight’s normal. Centimetres,’ he said.
‘That’s fine. How much?’
‘Eighty pence. Payable now.’
‘Eighty pence?’
‘Very discreet service here. You pay for that.’
I reluctantly agreed. ‘A friend of mine recommended you.’
‘Oh, yes?’ he said with a chuckle.
‘Lorelei Addington.’
For a split second he stared at me. Then he smiled. ‘The actress? Don’t think we’ve had her. I’d be on some beach in the South Seas smoking fat cigars if we had. Lot of trade on that.’
I couldn’t tell if he was hiding something from me. ‘When will it be ready?’
‘Tomorrow at three.’
‘All right.’ I lifted it up. ‘Can you tell me anything about it?’
He looked bemused. ‘Like what?’
‘Anything.’
‘It’s a neg. What the fuck else is there?’
‘Sorry. No, that’s fine.’ I don’t know what I had expected him to tell me. As I pushed through the doorway, I glanced back. His expression showed an animal wariness.
27
I went down the stairs barefoot the next day, Saturday, thinking that we could make pancakes for breakfast and pretend it was Shrove Tuesday – I had a little sugar and a lemon to squeeze over them. Pondering whether I had enough powdered eggs, I heard the postwoman arriving. ‘You’re up early,’ she said, as I opened the door.
‘So are you.’
‘My job, though,’ she chuckled. ‘Sorry, looks like bills.’ She handed over two brown manila envelopes before touching her cap and leaving. I put the malignant envelopes on the little table in the hallway for Nick. He could deal with them. It was then that I noticed something was missing.
A framed photograph that my friend Sally had taken of us as we had left our wedding ceremony wasn’t in its place on the wall, even though the hook that had held it was still there. I searched around for the photograph and quickly spotted it on the floor by the coat rack. It couldn’t have just fallen, certainly not to where it was now. It was a little strange, but I didn’t think much of it.
As I bent down to pick it up and replace it in its spot on the wall, however, I noticed something underneath. It was a short white cigarette butt, the tobacco burned away. Nick’s brand had a sky-blue band around the white, and there was none on this one. I had thoroughly cleaned the hallway just yesterday too, and was certain it hadn’t been there then. Had someone smoked it and dropped it there, placing the photograph over it to ensure that it was found? It was said that the Secs did such things to disturb and intimidate. Or perhaps it was nothing and I had simply missed the cigarette when cleaning. I held it in my fingers, my pulse racing.
The waiting room of the South London Hospital seemed to cater to everyone without the right connections. Nick could probably have had me seen at Guy’s alongside Party members if I had asked him, but I wanted to keep my visit to myself for now, because I was there to find out what had caused my miscarriage and I wanted to know whether it was good or bad news about having another child before I told him. He was doing his usual Saturday-morning surgery, so I hadn’t had to come up with an excuse for where I was going.
There was a mass of people waiting at the chaotic reception desk. If there had ever been a single queue, it had long since broken down into an unruly shambles of young and old: aged women with walking frames crying at the back because they were too frightened of the pushing and shoving; young men forcing their way forward with hard looks; girls holding shrieking babies. Sometimes the nurses would wave at a young soldier who stood smoking by the doors, and he would amble over, bored, and push one or two of the young men outside, telling them they wouldn’t be seen. After getting to the front and putting my name down, I was directed to a hard bench, where I waited to be called. I sat watching the sea of people constantly change yet remain somehow the same.
Three hours later – I wished I had taken a book with me – my name was shouted out and I was directed to a cubicle formed of curtains within a large room with a dirty floor. There were ten other examination booths; all were occupied and in some I saw women in various states of undress attempting to cover themselves as best they could with blue sheets. Yes, it was in a bad state, but it was free, I reminded myself. It was free for everyone in need.
A tall, slim man with untidy white hair hurried into my cubicle, checking a sheet on a clipboard. He had a harassed air about him. ‘I am Dr Clement,’ he said in a French accent. I guessed he was one of the refugees from ’40 who hadn’t returned to their ravaged land. ‘May I have your name?’
‘Jane Cawson.’
‘Good, now what seems to be the problem?’