Tomorrow morning at eleven she had her interview at Bourne & Hollingsworth. After that she would have to find her way from Oxford Street to Whitechapel to see Constance, then back again to Paddington for her last night there.
What had seemed so simple when George was talking about it now looked so scary. What if she got lost? People said London was dangerous. Supposing someone stole her handbag with all her money and train tickets?
Molly had never been to London before. In fact, the furthest she’d been from her home was a day trip to Weston-super-Mare. She recalled her disappointment when her father refused to let her go to London for the Coronation. He was going to be savage when he got up today to discover that, this time, she’d taken off without his permission.
She smiled at the thought of it. He hated anyone getting one over him and was smart enough to realize she would have been planning this for days. Of course, she’d be for it when she got home but, hopefully, she’d be able to inform him that he’d have no further say in her future, as Bourne & Hollingsworth had offered her a position.
It had seemed forever waiting for the replies to her letters; almost every day, she had had to make sure she was in the shop when the postman called, to ensure that any letter came straight to her. The one from Bourne & Hollingsworth came first, offering her an interview on 12 August. By that point, Molly had convinced herself that Constance wasn’t ever going to reply. But she was wrong: the long-awaited letter arrived a few days later.
Molly took the letter out of her handbag to read again because each time she read it she gained comfort in finding that Constance cared as much about Cassie and Petal as she did.
Dear Miss Heywood
[she read]
Please forgive my delay in responding to your letter, but the content was so upsetting that I found myself unable to think what I should say to you. I am deeply shocked and horrified that Cassandra is dead, and absolutely appalled that Petal was taken by her murderer.
To think of that sweet child crying for her mother is more than I can bear, and all I can do is offer up prayers that her kidnapper is treating her well, wherever she is.
Please do call on me when you are in London. We may be able to help one another through the grief and anxiety by talking about it together.
Sincerely yours
Constance
Molly had telephoned her yesterday and was surprised to hear a very frail-sounding voice on the other end of the line. She hadn’t for one moment thought of Constance as old. However, Constance had seemed delighted that Molly would be coming to see her the following afternoon.
George had pressed a five-pound note into her hand just before she boarded the train. ‘It’s for unexpected expenses,’ he said, waving away her protestations. ‘If you get lost, or you feel threatened, it’s money for a cab. It’s a safety net.’
Molly had said she would give it him back if no emergency arose, but he’d laughed and kissed her cheek, saying all she had to do was come home safely.
Molly wished she knew how he really thought of her. He’d been part of her life since she was five, and she’d always assumed he saw her like a sister, nothing more. But there did seem to be something more than that or why would he be so waspish about Simon? Like everyone else he had heard about his wife coming to the village to see him. George had spoken about the man as if he were a complete cad. Was it jealousy?
She might not know George’s true feelings for her, but one thing was certain, she couldn’t wish for a better friend. He’d rung the guest house in London and booked her room, driven her to the station and given her the encouragement she needed to make this huge first step towards leaving home. She hadn’t admitted to him that she was scared of staying in a guest house because she’d never been in one before, or that the prospect of going on the underground filled her with dread. She certainly wouldn’t have admitted that she didn’t know how she was going to eat while she was away, because she was much too bashful to go into a café alone.
Was everyone like this on their first trip to London? Or was she just being a big baby?
The rhythmic chugging of the train was so soothing that Molly found herself wafting into a kind of torpor in which random thoughts and things people had said in the last couple of days kept popping back into her head.
George had warned her that the Braemar Guest House was a little shabby, but she was to keep in mind that the whole of London was that way, and it would be some time before it recovered from all the bomb damage during the war. He said she’d see bomb sites wherever she went.
There were a great many bomb sites in Bristol, too; almost the entire medieval shopping area of High Street and Wine Street was destroyed during the Blitz. Molly could remember the thudding noise from the bombs late in 1940 and the winter of ’41, and seeing a red glow to the sky from the burning buildings. The horror of what was going on in the city was brought home even more closely by seeing ‘trekkers’, people fleeing for safety to the countryside, prams loaded up with their treasures as well as small children. Those people walked miles, many of them camping out under the stars however cold it was, fearing they would be killed if they stayed at home.
Molly had been twelve then, old enough to have a clear grasp of what war meant, to understand why food rationing was necessary and the terror bombing produced. She remembered how the children at school talked about their fathers and older brothers who had been called up. To her shame, at the time, Molly had always considered those children lucky, because their fathers were away, but she didn’t know back then that some fathers were kind, gentle, affectionate men.
A couple of weeks ago she had run into George while delivering some groceries. It was a hot afternoon and they’d gone for a short walk across the fields together, because George was delaying getting back to the police station just as she was spinning out delivering the groceries.
He’d asked her what she’d been talking to Peter Hayes about in the street a few days earlier. Peter Hayes was a bit of a womanizer, and a bighead, too, and she’d responded a little brusquely, saying something cutting about men who liked to throw their weight around.
‘Maybe the reason you’ve never met Mr Right is because you suspect all men are bullies like your dad and you never give anyone a chance to prove himself,’ George had said.
‘I don’t think that,’ she said indignantly. She’d been a bit nasty about Peter; she had, in fact, stopped him in the street to remind him he hadn’t been into the shop to pay for some groceries that had been dropped off with him several days earlier. She wasn’t going to tell George that, though, because it was unfair to bandy such things around. ‘If you must know, George, you’ve got it back to front. It’s not that I’m “left on the shelf” because I’m frightened of men. It’s just that my dad makes it impossible for me to keep a boyfriend.’
Except for Andy, whom Jack Heywood never met or even found out about, every other prospective boyfriend had been frightened off. Molly had tried to deter them from coming to the house to pick her up, but well-brought-up boys insisted on it. One encounter with her father was enough for most of them: his sarcasm and the way he belittled them was too hard to stomach. She’d had boyfriends who had tried to persist, but who could blame them for preferring to date a girl whose parents were pleasant?
All Molly’s old schoolfriends had been allowed to invite boyfriends home for tea or Sunday lunch; sometimes their fathers even went to the football or to the pub with them. Courtship flourished where there was a climate of friendliness, trust and real interest. Molly knew this for certain, as all those same old friends were married now, and most had at least two children.