Читать книгу Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered - Rosie Thomas - Страница 23

Summer, 1955

‘It’s cold,’ Julia said.

She looked at the scuffed suitcase at her feet, but it hardly seemed worth opening it and rummaging amongst the grubby contents for warmer clothes. She shivered, and hunched her shoulders.

Mattie didn’t even answer.

They sat side by side on the bench, silently, and the pigeons that had gathered in the hope of sandwich crumbs waddled away again. Over the stone balustrade in front of them the girls could just see the flat, murky river. A barge nosed slowly upstream and they watched it slide past them. A sluggish wash fanned out in its wake.

‘We could go home,’ Julia whispered.

Even to suggest it punctured her pride, but she wanted to be sure that Mattie’s resolve was still as firm as her own. Even though their defiance had brought them here, to this.

The rumble of the evening traffic along the Embankment seemed to grow louder to fill the silence between them. It was the first time either of them had mentioned going home, but they knew that they had both been thinking about it. It was three nights since they had run away. Four nights since Mattie had appeared at Julia’s parents’ front door, back in Fairmile Road, with her face bruised and puffy and her home-made blouse torn off her shoulder.

Julia’s father had stared past Mattie at the police car waiting in the road. Then his eyes had flicked to and fro, checking to see if any of the neighbours might be witnessing the spectacle. He had opened the door by another inch, as Julia watched from the top of the stairs.

‘Don’t you know that it’s one o’clock in the morning?’ he had asked his daughter’s best friend.

‘I’m sorry,’ Mattie said.

‘I suppose you’d better come in.’

Mattie stepped into the hallway. Mr Smith looked almost unrecognisable without his stiff collar, and his wife’s curlers sat on her head like thin sausages. Only the house looked the same. Little slippery rugs on the slippery floor, flowery papered walls and spiky plants in pots, and a framed Coronation picture of the Queen. And then Julia was the same, looking anxiously down at her, with her hair very dark against her pink dressing gown. Mattie was so relieved to see her, and the concern in Julia’s face touched her so directly, that she was almost crying again.

Mattie hitched the torn pieces of her blouse together and faced Julia’s parents squarely. They had always hated her, of course. They thought she led Julia astray, although that wasn’t the truth. It didn’t matter, she told herself. If they threw her out into the street again, at least the policeman had gone.

‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Betty Smith asked. Julia came down the stairs, pushing past her parents, putting an arm around Mattie’s shoulders. Mattie felt her comforting warmth. She would keep the story simple, she decided. Tomorrow, later today, whatever the time was, she would tell Julia what had really happened.

‘I’m afraid that there was an argument at home. My father … my father thought that I was out too late. I’d been to see East of Eden, that’s all. Julia didn’t want to come again.’

‘Julia was at home, doing her homework,’ Mr Smith said. ‘As she should have been every other night this week, instead of running around goodness knows where.’ With you, he might as well have added.

Julia is sixteen years old, Mattie thought savagely. What does bloody homework matter? And I’m seventeen. I’m not going to cry. Not after everything that’s happened. Not just because of these people, with their little, shut-in faces.

‘There was an argument,’ she went on. ‘I came out for a walk. To keep out of the way, you see? And a policeman saw me. He thought I was up to no good.’ She tried to laugh, but it drained away into their stony silence. Clearly Mr and Mrs Smith thought she was up to no good as well. ‘He offered to take me to friends, or relatives. I thought of here. I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind helping me. Just for one night.’

I’m not here because of you. I came to Julia. And what gives you the right to judge me?

‘You’d better stay, then,’ Vernon Smith said brusquely. He left it unclear whether it was for Mattie’s own sake, or in case of another visit from the police. Betty began to flutter about dust and boxes in the spare bedroom.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Mattie said. She realised that she was exhausted. To go to sleep, that was all that mattered. ‘Anywhere will do.’

Julia was shocked by Mattie’s appearance. It wasn’t just the bruises, and the oozing cut at the corner of her mouth. More disturbingly, Mattie’s verve and defiance seemed to have drained out of her, leaving her as shapeless as a burst balloon. Julia had never seen that, in all the years that they had been friends.

‘Come on,’ she whispered now. ‘It’s all right. Tomorrow, when you wake up, it’ll be all right.’

She steered Mattie up the cramped stairs, with Betty fussing behind them.

Vernon still wanted to impose his own order. ‘I should telephone your father, at least, to say where you are. I wouldn’t want him made anxious on our account.’ He lifted up a china doll with an orange net skirt from the hall table. The telephone sat underneath the skirt. At lot of things in the Smiths’ house had covers. Even Mr Smith’s Ford Popular, parked outside, had a mackintosh coat.

‘We’re not on the telephone,’ Mattie said.

Betty made Julia go back to bed. In the white tiled bathroom Mattie washed her face with the wholesome Pears soap laid out for her. Her distorted face in the mirror looked older under its tangle of hair. Betty knocked on the door and handed her a bottle of TCP.

‘Put some of this on your poor mouth,’ she said.

The small kindness brought Mattie to the edge of tears again.

She went into the spare room and climbed under the turquoise eiderdown. She fell asleep at once.

In the morning, at six o’clock, Julia came in with a cup of tea. She opened the curtains and looked out. In the early light the row of back gardens was tidy and innocent, its squares of lawn surrounded by pink hybrid tea roses. Julia turned her back as if she hated them.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

Mattie looked away, and Julia climbed in at the bottom of the bed, pulling the eiderdown around her. ‘What happened?’ she persisted.

And then, lying there wrapped in the eiderdown and enclosed by the room’s sprigged wallpaper, whispering so that Betty and Vernon wouldn’t hear, Mattie told her.

Julia listened, with anger and disgust and sympathy mounting inside her. Afterwards, with two bright spots of colour showing in her cheeks, she held Mattie’s hand between both of hers.

‘Why didn’t you ever tell me before?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mattie said. She was crying now, tears pouring down her cheeks and making a dark patch on the turquoise cover. She had told Julia everything, the smallest details that she had kept boxed up for so long. And at once, amazingly, she had felt her guilt lifting. Julia hadn’t cried out in horror, or accusation, of course. Had she been afraid for all this time that it was really her own fault?

‘It’s all right.’ Julia hugged her, making inarticulate, comforting noises. ‘Mat, it’s all right. You’ve got me. We’ve got each other.’

At last, the storm of crying subsided. Mattie sniffed, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘Sorry. Thanks. Look at me.’

‘No thanks.’

They laughed, shakily. Julia was relieved to see Mattie lifting her chin up again. She would be all right. Everything would come back to her, once they had got away. Excitement, a fierce heat, was beginning to boil inside Julia, fuelled by her anger. It was hard to talk calmly as the idea took hold of her.

‘Listen, Mattie, this is what we’ll do. You don’t have to go back there to him. We’ll just go. We’ll leave all of this …’ She waved through the bedroom window, and the gesture took in the bland gardens, the grid of streets with their semi-detached houses that made up the nice part of town, and the sprawling, featurelessly brutal estate beyond, where Mattie lived. It included the High Street, with its Odeon showing East of Eden, and the single milk bar with half a dozen teds lounging outside it, the red-brick church that Betty and Vernon belonged to and the Youth Club hall behind it, the grammar school where Mattie and Julia had met, and where they had made their first small gestures of defiance. The gestures had grown as they got older. Mattie and Julia would have been expelled, if they hadn’t been much cleverer than their anxious counterparts.

Julia’s grand gesture took in the whole of the dull, virtuous suburb, and rejected it. ‘We’ll go to London. We’ll find ourselves jobs, and we’ll find a flat. Then we can live, can’t we? We always said we would, didn’t we?’

Up to London was where they went when they skipped off school for the day. They went up on Saturday nights now, when they had enough money to go dancing at a club. It was a glittering, covetable world, distant, but now, suddenly, within reach.

‘We’ve talked about it so often.’ Sitting in the park, with their backs against the green railings. Trailing slowly home from school. Whispering, over slow cups of coffee.

Carefully, Mattie said, ‘I could pack in my job easily enough.’ Since leaving Blick Road Grammar she had worked as a filing clerk in an estate agency, and she hated every minute of it. Mattie wanted to be an actress. She wanted it so much that Julia teased her about it. ‘But you’re still at school.’

‘Bugger school,’ Julia said triumphantly. ‘Dad wants me to be a secretary. Not a typist, you know. A private secretary, to a businessman. Mum wants me to be married to a solicitor or a bank manager. I don’t want to be either of those. Why should I stay at school to do typing and book-keeping? We can go, Mattie. Out there, where we belong.’

She flung her arm in a dramatic gesture.

Mattie and Julia travelled in their imagination together, away from Fairmile Road and the colourless suburban landscape.

‘What about your mum and dad?’ Mattie persisted.

Julia clenched her fists, and then let them fall open, impotent. Mattie knew some of how she felt, but it was still difficult to put it into words. Even more difficult now, because it sounded so trivial after Mattie’s confession. But Julia felt that this little, tidy house wound iron bands around her chest, stopping her breathing. She was confined by her parents’ love and expectations. She knew that they loved her, and she was sure that she didn’t deserve it. Their disapproval of Mattie, and of Julia’s own passions, masked their frightened anxiety for her. Perhaps they were right to be anxious, Julia thought. She knew that she couldn’t meet their expectations. Vernon and Betty wanted a replica of themselves. Julia wanted other, vaguer, more violent things for herself. Not a life like Betty’s, she was sure of that.

‘I’m like a cuckoo in this house,’ Julia said.

They looked around the spare bedroom, and smiled at each other.

‘If I go now, with you, they’ll be shocked but perhaps it’ll be better in the end. Better than staying here, getting worse. And when we’re settled, when we’ve made it, it will be different. We’ll all be equal. They won’t have to fight me all the time.’

It was all when, Julia remembered, sitting on the Embankment with all her possessions at her feet, and afterwards, years afterwards. We never thought if, in those days, Mattie and me.

Mattie had smiled suddenly, a crooked smile at first because of her broken lip, but then it broadened recklessly. ‘When shall we go?’

‘Today,’ Julia said. ‘Today, of course.’

Later, when Vernon was at work and Betty had gone shopping, Julia gathered her belongings together and flung them into two suitcases. Mattie wouldn’t go home even for long enough to collect her clothes, so Julia’s would have to do for both of them.

There was no time to spare. Betty was seldom out of the house for more than an hour. In the frantic last minute, Julia scribbled a note to her. There was no time to choose the words, no time to think what she was saying. I’m going, that was all.

She remembered the carelessness of that, later.

The girls caught the train from the familiar, musty local station. On the short journey they crammed into the lavatory and made up their faces in the dim mirror.

Liverpool Street station seemed larger, and grimmer than it had looked on their earlier adventures. Mattie flung out her arms.

‘The Big City welcomes us.’ But she was looking at Julia with faint anxiety. Julia smiled determinedly back.

‘Not only does it welcome us,’ she announced, ‘it belongs to us.’

To make their claim on it, they rode to Oxford Circus on the underground. When they emerged, Oxford Street stretched invitingly on either side of them.

In the beginning, it had been a huge adventure, and they had felt delighted with themselves. They started by looking for work, and they both found jobs at once. Mattie camouflaged her bruises with Pan-Stik make-up and was taken on as a junior assistant in a shoe shop. Julia had learned to type as part of her commercial course at school, and she presented herself for an interview as a typist in the accounts department of a big store. The supervisor set her a spelling and comprehension test that seemed ridiculously simple.

‘That’s very good,’ the woman told her, looking surprised. ‘I’m sure you would be useful here. When would you like to start?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Julia said promptly.

The words accounts department made her think of her father. She had often looked at him and wondered how he could go off every day, year after year, to the same dull, meaningless job. It’s only for a little while, for me, she told herself. Everything is going to happen, soon. After the interview Julia walked out into the street, and she saw the sunshine reflecting off the shop windows like a greeting. I can work, she was thinking. I can keep myself. I don’t have to ask for anything.

It was a moment of intense pleasure.

Julia could feel her freedom, like expensive scent or floating chiffon, drifting around her as she walked. It was as though she had already travelled a long, long way from home.

When she met Mattie later, they were both almost dancing with triumph. ‘How much?’ Mattie demanded.

‘Eight pounds a week.’

‘And I get seven pounds, ten shillings. Thirty bob more than the last place. We’ll be rich.’

It was more money than either of them had ever had before, and they told each other incredulously that they would have that much to spend every week. They bought some sandwiches and a bottle of cider to celebrate, and picnicked in Trafalgar Square. When they had drunk the cider they sat and beamed vaguely at the tourists photographing the fountains.

‘The next thing is somewhere to live,’ Mattie said.

‘A flat,’ Julia agreed, tipping the bottle to make sure it was empty. ‘Simple, but elegant. Mattie Banner and Julia Smith, at home.’

The difficulties began after that.

They found jobs, but the days until they could expect to be paid stretched awkwardly ahead of them. The landlords of all the flats they went to see demanded rent in advance, and deposits, and the girls couldn’t muster even a fraction of the money. The ones who didn’t ask for money eyed the two of them suspiciously, and asked how old they were. Mattie always answered defiantly, ‘Twenty,’ but even so the rooms turned out to be let already.

They stayed in the cheapest hotel they could find, and scoured the To Let columns of the Evening Standard every morning as soon as the paper came on the streets, but by the third day they still hadn’t found anywhere that they could afford. The first euphoria began to evaporate. Friday morning came, and as they were leaving the grubby hotel on their way to work, the manager waylaid them. He announced that it was time for them settle their bill to date, handing the folded slip of paper over to them. It came to much more than had reckoned for, and even by pooling all their resources they were only just able to meet it. They were left with a few shillings between them. Julia smiled brightly at the manager to hide her concern.

‘And how much longer are you planning to stay with us?’ the man asked.

‘Oh. Two, perhaps three more nights. Just until we’ve found ourselves a nice flat.’

‘I see.’ The manager examined his nails, and then he said, ‘I’m afraid that I shall have to ask you for a deposit on your room. The weekend is our busy time, you see. We do have to be quite sure …’ He broke off, the picture of regret.

‘How much?’

‘Five pounds. That will cover both of you, of course.’

‘Oh, of course.’

There was a pause. At last Mattie said desperately, ‘We’ll let you know this evening.’

‘No later than this evening, then.’

As they scurried away to the tube station Mattie burst out furiously, ‘He knows we haven’t got it. The miserable bugger.’

‘You can’t blame him.’ Julia was practical. ‘We’ll have to ask them at work to pay us for these two days.’

‘It still won’t be enough.’

‘It’ll be better than nothing, won’t it?’

Mattie grinned at her suddenly. Her bruises were fading, and it no longer hurt her to smile. ‘Don’t worry. Something’ll turn up.’

They parted at Oxford Circus and went their separate ways.

Julia waited until her supervisor came back from her dinner-break, and then mumbled her request.

‘Oh no, dear, I don’t think we can do that. You have to work a full week first. Your money will come next Friday, with the three extra days, which will be nice, won’t it? Otherwise it makes it too complicated for the payroll people, you know. Is there some trouble, dear?’

Julia hesitated, but she was too proud to confide in this wispy, middle-aged stranger.

‘Oh no, I just wanted to buy something, that’s all.’

‘Well. I’m sure your parents will be glad to help it it’s something important. Ask your mother tonight.’

Julia had told them at the interview that she still lived at home. It had seemed that kind of job.

She went back to the typewriter, which she was already beginning to hate, and started to thump at the keys.

‘What did they say?’ Mattie asked when they met.

‘Nothing until next Friday.’

‘Oh shit. Mine’ll pay me tomorrow afternoon, though.’

A whole night and a day to get through until then.

They collected their luggage from the hotel. ‘We’ve found the perfect flat,’ Julia told the manager who came out of his lair to see them off. ‘Absolutely huge, and terribly cheap.’

The truth couldn’t have been more different. They had divided their remaining change between them that morning, and they agreed that they would allow themselves one cup of coffee and a sandwich for lunch. When they found themselves outside the hotel with their luggage they were at a loss, and achingly hungry. They took a bus, the first one that came along because the manager was standing in the doorway watching them, and rode as far as a fourpenny fare would take them. When they reached the Embankment, they had just three shillings left.

They sat on their bench for a long time, just watching the river. The sky faded from blue to pearl grey, with a green glow that deepened to rose pink behind the chimneys of Battersea Power Station. It would have been beautiful if they had had the heart to look at it.

At last, the sky and water were completely dark.

‘We could go home,’ Julia whispered.

Mattie turned her head to look at her. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘We can’t go back. I can’t.’ She drew her knees up and rested her chin on them, looking out over the river again. Julia wished that she had never said it, even if it was only to test Mattie’s resolve.

‘Something will turn up.’ Julia tried to be comforting, but their rallying cry had no effect this time.

After another long silence Mattie said, ‘We’ll have to find somewhere to sleep outside.’

‘What about that park we walked through last night?’

They had eaten fish and chips sitting on the grass in Hyde Park. The idea of lying in the soft grass under the shelter of rustling trees seemed almost inviting.

‘How far is it?’

‘Quite a long way.’

They turned away from the black river and the necklace of lights lacing its banks and started to walk. After a few hundred yards they realised that the suitcases were impossibly heavy.

‘All this junk,’ Mattie grumbled. ‘We don’t need it. We should throw it away, and then we’d really be free.’

‘You could throw it away if it was yours,’ Julia pointed out. They went on in silence, irritable with one another, and then stopped again. A huge building blazed in front of them, its tiers of windows opulently draped. Julia peered at the big silvery letters on the sweep of canopy that faced the river.

‘It’s the Savoy Hotel,’ she whispered.

‘Oh, that’s perfect. Let’s take a suite.’

For no particular reason they turned their backs on the river and walked up a tiny, steep side alley. There was big, recessed doorway in the wall of the hotel, with heavy padlocked bars holding the doors shut. A ventilator grille was set high up and warm air that smelt of cooking pulsed out of it.

‘I’m not going any further,’ Mattie said. ‘We can lie down here.’

The alley was lit by one old-fashioned street lamp, and it was completely deserted. Mattie sank down on the step and drew her legs up. She curled up sideways and closed her eyes.

To Julia, she looked suddenly as if she was dead, a body abandoned in a huddle of clothes.

‘Mattie! Don’t do that.’

The sharp note of fear in her voice brought Mattie struggling upright again.

‘What’s the matter? It’s all right. Look, there’s room for us both. Come in here behind me and I’ll shield you.’

Julia looked up and down the alley. The city waiting beyond its dark mouth seemed threatening now. Reluctantly she stepped past Mattie and hauled the suitcases into the grimy space. She opened one and took out some of the least essential clothes, bunching them up to make pillows and a scrap of a bed. She lay down with the suitcases wedged behind her for safety, and Mattie squeezed herself in too. Julia tucked her knees into the crook of Mattie’s and hunched up to her warm back. Mattie’s mass of curls, still surprisingly scented with her Coty perfume, fell over her face.

‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Julia whispered.

‘You helped me to get away,’ Mattie said simply. And then, ‘We’ll be all right, you know.’

‘I know we will,’ Julia answered.

They lay quietly, hoping to sleep. After a while a smartly dressed couple came up the alley. The yellow light from the street lamp glittered briefly on the woman’s necklace. They glanced at the figures in the doorway as they passed, and looked quickly away again, separating themselves.

‘I’ve done that,’ Mattie whispered, when they had gone.

‘Me too.’

It seemed such a small step, now, from that world, padded with food and insulated with little tokens of security, to this doorway.

I’m so hungry.’

‘We must save the money for breakfast.’

The smell of food wafting from the ventilator made them feel ravenous, and sick at the same time. There were other smells lingering in the doorway too. Mattie and Julia clung together, and after a while they drifted into an uncomfortable sleep.

Mattie had no idea how long she had been dozing for. She woke up, confused and aching, with the panicky certainty that someone was watching them. She lifted her head from the nest of clothes and a gasp of terror shook her. A man was leaning over her. His face was covered with grey whiskers and his matted grey hair hung down to his shoulders. He was grinning, his lips drawn back to reveal black stumps of teeth. It was his breath that frightened Mattie most. It smelt rawly of drink and she recoiled, trying to escape from the memories that that close, fetid smell stirred in her. She felt Julia go stiff behind her, and her fingers digging into her arms.

‘Two lassies,’ the apparition mumbled and then cackled with laugher. ‘Two lassies, is it? Ma’ pitch, ye know, this is. Mine.’ He thrust his face closer and they tried to edge backwards.

‘Please go away,’ Julia whispered. ‘We’re not doing any harm. We’ve nowhere else.’

‘Ah can see that.’ He cackled more raucously still. ‘Well, seein’ it’s you ye can be ma guests. Just fer tonight. ’Tis the Savoy, ye know. Act nice. They serve breakfast, just round the corner, first thing.’ He picked up a filthy sack and shuffled away down the hill, still hooting with laughter.

Mattie was shuddering with fright and shock. Julia put her arm over her shoulders. ‘He was only an old tramp. We’ve pinched his place, that’s all. Come on, we’ll change places so that I’m in the front. You can hide behind me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Mattie mumbled.

They scrambled stiffly to their knees and lay down again. Mattie stopped shaking at last, and she let her eyes close. It wasn’t the tramp who she saw at once against her eyelids. It was only his smell that had frightened her, and repelled her so deeply that all her flesh screamed and crawled in case he touched her.

He had made her think of her father, and of what she had really run away from.

She had been to see East of Eden, just as she had told Vernon and Betty Smith. She came blindly out of the Odeon in the High Street with the image of James Dean more real than the windows of Woolworths across the street, more flesh and blood than the two boys from the technical college lounging in front of them. For a few minutes more, while the spell lasted, the hated suburban shopping street and the teds whistling at her were nothing to do with Mattie.

For two whole hours she had escaped from home and her younger brothers and sisters, from work, and from everything that surrounded her. It was her fourth visit. Julia had come with her three times, but even Julia had balked at a fourth visit. So Mattie had gone on her own, and afterwards she drifted to the bus stop, lost inside her own head with Cal Trask.

The enchantment lasted until she reached home. She walked through the estate, where every avenue and turning was the same as the last and the next, and reached her own front gate. It creaked open, brushing over the docks and nettles sprouting across the path. She stopped for a second outside her own front door. The house was quiet. It must have thundered while she was in the cinema, Mattie thought. It had been a dusty, muggy day but the air was cool and clear now.

She put her key in the lock and opened the front door.

Ted Banner was standing in the dim hallway.

‘Where the bloody hell have you have been, you dirty little madam?’

Mattie smelt sweat and whisky and the indefinable, sour scent of her father’s hopeless anger. She knew what was coming. Her stomach heaved with fright, but she made herself say, calmly and clearly so that he couldn’t possibly misunderstand her, ‘I’ve been to the Odeon to see a picture. It was James Dean in East of Eden. It finished at a quarter to ten and I came straight home.’ As conciliatory as she could be, with as much detail as possible, so that he might believe her. But he didn’t. He came at her, and she glimpsed the patch of sweat darkening his vest as he lifted his fist.

‘Bloody little liar.’

He swiped viciously at her. Mattie flung up her arm to protect her face, but the blow still jarred and she stumbled backwards.

‘Been out with some feller, haven’t you? Taking your knickers off for anyone who asks you in the back of his car, like your sister. All the same, all of you.’

‘I haven’t. I told you, I’ve been to the pictures.’

‘Again?’

Some evenings, Mattie didn’t have the protection of the truth. But it made no difference anyway. Her father hit her again, hard, a double blow with the flat and then the back of his hand. Her teeth sliced into the corner of her lip, and she tasted blood, salty in her mouth. A little part of her, cold and detached and disgusted, heard the rest of herself whimpering with fear. He knocked her sideways and she fell against the rickety coatstand that stood behind the door. It collapsed with her, in a humiliating tangle of clothes and limbs.

‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Please, Dad.’

I hate you. The words drummed in her head. I hate you.

A door creaked open at the top of the stairs, and Mattie looked up to see her sister Marilyn, nine years old, looking down at them. The girl’s eyes were wide with anxiety, but there was no surprise in them.

‘It’s all right, Marilyn,’ Mattie said. She pulled herself upright, pressing the palm of her hand against her throbbing lip. ‘Go back to bed now. Don’t wake Sam up.’

The child melted away again.

Ted was breathing heavily through his mouth. His cheeks were blotched and treaded with broken veins, and his big moustache was beaded with sweat and spittle.

Suddenly his shoulders sagged. He rolled his head to and fro, as if he was trying to break free of something.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last.

Mattie tried to slip past him up the stairs. ‘It’s all right,’ she murmured, pressing herself against the wall so that even her clothes need not brush against him. But his hand caught her wrist.

‘Come in the kitchen,’ he begged her, in a new, wheedling voice. ‘I’ll make us both a nice cup of tea.’

‘All right,’ Mattie said. It was easier to acquiesce than to risk stirring up his anger again.

She watched her father warily as he lit the gas and put the kettle on. She was ready for him when he came at her again. She flinched, and slid out of his reach behind the table.

He held out his big, meaty hands.

‘Mat, don’t run away from me. Don’t, I can’t bear it.’

There was a bottle of whisky on the table and he took a swig from it, wiping his moustache with his fingers. He had gone from anger to self-pitying drunkenness. Mattie knew what that meant too, and it made her even more afraid.

‘Come here.’

Her skin crawled, but she knew that she couldn’t refuse him. She sidled out from the table’s protection.

‘Right here, I said.’

Her father’s hand touched her arm and then her shoulders. It weighed heavily, and the hairy skin of his forearm was hot and prickly against the nape of her neck. With his other hand he turned her face to his. He was very close, and she bit the insides of her cheeks to keep her fear and disgust hidden inside her. Ted’s hand slipped downwards, and his fingers touched her breast. He hesitated for a second, his expression suddenly dreamy, almost tender. Then his hand closed on her, squeezing and twisting, and she cried out in pain.

‘Don’t. Please don’t.’

‘Don’t you like it? Those boys do it, don’t they?’

They didn’t because Mattie wouldn’t let them, but her father didn’t know that. The sweat had broken out on his face again, and a thread of it trickled from his hairline, across his temple. His mouth opened and hung loosely as he rubbed his hand over her breast. He jerked her closer. Holding her so tightly that she knew she couldn’t break away, he thrust his face against hers and kissed her. Wetness smeared her mouth and chin, and then his tongue forced itself between her lips.

Mattie understood how drunk he was.

For years, since she was younger than Marilyn, her father had touched and fondled her.

‘It’s a little game,’ he used to say. ‘Our little game. Don’t tell anyone, will you?’

Mattie hated it, and the feelings it stirred in her frightened and puzzled her. But she also discovered that it was a protection. If she let him play his game, just occasionally, he was less likely to hit her. She would stand, mute and motionless, and let him run his hands over her. That was all. Nothing else. She kept the knowledge of it in a little box, closed off from everything else, never mentioning it to her older sisters, or to her mother while she was still alive. It was just her father, after all, just the way he was. Dirty, and pathetic, and she would get away from him as soon as she could.

She had never even whispered anything to Julia.

But tonight was different. Somehow Ted had slipped beyond control. He didn’t seem pathetic any more, so she couldn’t detach herself in despising him. He was dangerous now. Too close, too dangerous.

Mattie’s fear paralysed her. She couldn’t move, and couldn’t stop him. He was grunting now, deep in his throat. He sat down heavily against the table, pulling her to him. Her legs were trapped between his. His hand went to the hem of her skirt. He wrenched at it, trying to pull it up. But it was too tight, and it caught at the top of her thighs. He squinted at her, his eyes puffy.

‘Take if off.’

Mattie shuddered, struggling in his grip. ‘No. Leave me alone. Leave me …’

He tore at her blouse instead. It was a skimpy, sleeveless thing that Mattie had made herself with lopsided hand stitching. The shoulder seam ripped and Ted forced his hand inside.

‘Let me do it. Just once,’ he begged her. His face was hidden, but she could feel his hot, wet mouth working against her neck. ‘I won’t ask you again. Ever, Mattie. Just once, will you?’

Mattie held herself still, gathering her strength. Then she lashed at him with her hands, and twisted her neck to try to bite any part of him that she could reach. He didn’t even notice the blow, and he was much too quick for her. He caught both her wrists in one hand, and the other tightened around her throat. For a second, they looked into each other’s eyes. Slowly, his fingers unfastened from her neck. She could feel the print of them on her skin.

He fumbled with his own clothes, undoing them.

Somehow, out of her pain and terror and disgust, Mattie found the right words. ‘Look at yourself,’ she commanded in a small, clear voice. ‘Just look at yourself.’

He saw his daughter’s face, paper-white except for the black tear-trails of mascara, her torn clothes, and her swollen, bloody lip.

And then he looked down at himself.

Ted shrank, deflating as if the whisky had found a puncture in his skin to trickle out of.

There was a long silence. Behind them, shockingly cosy, the kettle whistled.

At last he mumbled, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hit you. I’m jealous, see? Jealous of all those lads that hang around you. I don’t mean to get angry with you, don’t you understand? You’ve always been my girl. My special one, haven’t you?’

Mattie saw big, glassy tears gather in his eyes and roll down his cheeks. She felt sick, and dirty, and she turned her face away.

‘You don’t know what I’ve been through since your mum died.’

Oh yes, Mattie thought. Feel sorry for yourself. Not for Mum, or any of the rest of us. Feel sorry for yourself, because I won’t. I hate you.

With the knowledge of that, she realised that he had let go of her. She began to move, very slowly, backing away from him. His hands hung heavily at his sides, and his wet eyes stared at nothing. Mattie reached the kitchen door. In the same clear, cold voice she said, ‘Do yourself up. Don’t sit there like that.’

Then she walked through the clutter in the hall to the front door. She opened it and closed it again behind her, and walked down the path. She held herself very carefully, as if she was made of a shell that might break.

Only when the gate had creaked after her did she begin to run.

In the narrow space of the doorway her legs twitched involuntarily, and Julia stirred in front of her.

‘It’s all right,’ Julia told her. ‘He’s gone, he really has. Are you still scared? Do you want to talk for a bit?’

‘I was thinking about Marilyn, and the others,’ Mattie told her, half truthfully. Marilyn was only nine, and Phil, the youngest sister, was two years younger. Two boys, Ricky and Sam, came between Mattie and Marilyn. The eldest sister, Rozzie, was married to a mechanic and had a baby of her own. She lived on the estate too, but Rozzie kept clear of the house when Ted was likely to be at home.

‘The boys are all right,’ Mattie said, ‘but I don’t want to leave Phil and Marilyn there with him.’

Guilt folded around her again. Even if what her father had done had not been, somehow, all her own fault, Mattie was certain that she shouldn’t have abandoned her younger sisters to him. She had never seen Ted look at them in the way that he looked at her, but she couldn’t be sure that he didn’t touch them. Or if hadn’t done, that he might not now she was gone. Rozzie had never suspected, had she? In her shame, Mattie had kept her secret until she couldn’t hold on to it any longer, but it was unthinkable that Marilyn might have to suffer in the same way … Mattie rolled her head, looking up at the stained walls of her shelter. What could she do to help them, from here?

‘I know what we’ll do,’ Julia said firmly. ‘We’ll ring the Council and tell them what’s happened. There are people there who are supposed to see about kids, you know. They’ll look after them until …’ she was thinking quickly, improvising ‘… until we can have them with us, if you like. We could all live together, couldn’t we?’

Mattie smiled, in spite of herself. ‘Here?’

‘Don’t be stupid. When we’re well off. It might take a year, or something, but we’ll do it. Why shouldn’t we?’

A year seemed like a lifetime, then. When anything might happen.

‘I can’t tell anyone,’ Mattie whispered. ‘It was hard enough to tell you.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Julia said fiercely. Mattie and Julia hadn’t spent much time at one another’s homes, but Julia had seen enough of Ted Banner to imagine the rest. Sometimes he was fulsomely friendly. At other times, the times when the veins at his temples stood out in ridges and his eyes shrank to little red spots, she thought that he was terrifying. ‘You don’t have to say who you are. Just telephone, anonymously. I’ll do it, if you like. We’ve just got to make sure that someone looks after them, because it can’t be you any more. Perhaps they could go to Rozzie. As soon as we can, we’ll get a really big flat. One with two or three bedrooms, plenty of room. We can play records as loud as we want, invite whoever we want in. The girls will love it. They’ll be safe with us, Mattie.’

Mattie nodded, grateful for Julia’s generosity, letting herself accept the fantasy for now, for tonight at least. She lay still again, listening to Julia’s murmured talk. The plans grew more elaborate, as Julia spun the dreams to comfort herself as well as Mattie.

Cramped in the doorway, listening to her, Mattie drifted to sleep again.

Julia listened to her regular breathing. At first she was relieved that Mattie wasn’t frightened any more, but without the need to reassure her, her own bravado ebbed away. The dim street lamp seemed only to emphasise the terrifying darkness of the alley, and the darkness seemed endless. At last she began to waver in and out of an uncomfortable dream-ridden half-sleep. The dreams were vivid, and horrible, and when she jerked awake again the alley seemed to belong to them, rather than to reality. And then, far from being eerily deserted, a slow tide of hunched figures began to wander through it. To begin with she was sure that they were dream-figures, but then she understood that they were too real and she shrank backwards against Mattie for a shred of protection.

The alley had become a kind of thoroughfare for the derelicts and tramps of the Embankment. They drifted past the doorway, muttering or singing or cursing. Some of them peered at the girls and whispered or shouted at them; others went past, oblivious of everything but their own obsessions.

To Julia, the tide of them seemed a grotesque parody of the Oxford Street shoppers in sunny daylight. This is waiting for all of us, she thought, the dream world half claiming her again. Darkness and despair. And then, out of nowhere, the thought came to her, is this what Betty is so frightened of? She was quite sure of her mother’s fear, whereas in her childhood she had been puzzled by the nameless force that seemed to control her. Darkness. And then, like a chant repeated over and over inside her head, I won’t let it get me. Not me.

She slept, and then woke again. She thought that the night would go on for ever and then, quite suddenly, it was dawn. The spreading of dirty grey light was like a blessing.

Julia sat upright, relief easing her muscles. Leaning against the wall, with Mattie still asleep beside her, she watched the light grown stronger and stronger. In half an hour it was broad daylight once more.

Her strength flowed back again. With the return of light, she felt that the world belonged to her, and that she could take it, and make what she wanted from it. They had survived the night, and the little victory made her triumphant. She shook Mattie’s shoulder, and Mattie yawned herself into consciousness again.

‘Look,’ Julia said, ‘it’s daytime. Isn’t it beautiful?’

Mattie stretched, and grumbled, and let Julia drag her to her feet. They collected their belongings and stuffed them into the suitcases, then made their way on up the alley. Neither of them looked back at the doorway.

Before they reached the corner they heard doors banging, and a metallic rumble, almost like thunder. At once there was a babble of voices, and the sound of shuffling feet. The girls turned the corner and saw what was happening. Huge metal bins had been wheeled out of the hotel kitchens to wait for emptying. A dozen or so old men were clustering around them, picking out the scraps of food.

‘That’s what he meant about breakfast,’ Mattie said.

‘What?’

‘The old tramp, last night. Breakfast is served round the corner.’

‘Not for me, thanks.’

They stood watching the derelicts for a moment, remembering the night’s fears. Warmed and restored by the daylight, Julia felt an ache of pity for the filthy, hungry old men as they scraped up the food relics and stowed them in their tattered pockets. They weren’t dark, terrifying figures waiting for her to join them. They weren’t waiting for anything, except their sad breakfast.

‘Let’s find somewhere to wash,’ Mattie said.

They crossed the road and walked by on the opposite side. Just like the couple in the alley last night, Julia remembered. By crossing the road she had moved from the night world back into the other. Relief and a renewed sense of her own power flowed through her, warmer than the early morning sunlight.

‘I can’t wait to get clean again,’ Julia exulted. ‘Water and soap, how heavenly.’

Mattie eyed her. ‘You’re more like your mother than you think,’ she teased. ‘You can’t bear a bit of muck.’

The public lavatories near Trafalgar Square didn’t open until seven o’clock. They waited beside the green-painted railings, amongst the scavenging pigeons. The attendant who came to unlock the doors stared at them disapprovingly, but the girls were too busy even to notice. They ran cold, clear water out of the polished brass taps while she mopped around their feet. They drank their fill and then washed themselves with Julia’s Pears soap. It smelt oddly of Fairmile Road. Julia tried to dip her head into the basin to wash her hair, but the attendant darted out of her cubbyhole.

‘You can’t do that in ’ere. You’ll ’ave to go to the warm baths in Marshall Street for that.’

The girls made faces when she turned away, and then collapsed into giggles. Their high spirits were almost fully restored.

They made do with washing as much of themselves as they could undress under the attendant’s sour gaze, and picking the least crumpled of Julia’s clothes out of the cases. Then they perched in front of the mirror and defiantly made up their faces, with lots of mascara and eyeliner to hide the shadows left by the night in the doorway. Then they struggled out with their suitcases to the taxi-drivers’ coffee stall. They bought a mug of coffee and a ham roll each, and the simple food tasted better than anything they had ever eaten. The tide of people began to flow to work. Mattie and Julia had just enough money left between them for Mattie’s bus ride to her shoe shop. It was Saturday, and Julia’s accounts office was closed.

‘What will you do?’ Mattie asked, when they had eaten the last crumb of their rolls. They hadn’t nearly satisfied their hunger – Julia felt that she was even more ravenous than she had been before.

‘I don’t know. Sit in the park. Plan what we’re going to eat when you get your money tonight. Every mouthful of it.’

‘Oh, I’m so hungry,’ Mattie wailed.

‘Go on. Get your bus. They’ll sack you if you’re late, and then what’ll we do?’

Neither of them mentioned the problem of where they would sleep. They didn’t want to think about that, not now when the sun was getting brighter and the day seemed full of possibilities.

‘How do I look?’

Julia put her head on one side, studying Mattie carefully before she answered. Mattie struck an obligingly theatrical pose. She wasn’t conventionally pretty, but she had a lively face with wide-set eyes and a pointed chin. Her expression was bold and challenging. Mattie’s best features were her hair, a foaming mass of curls like a Pre-Raphaelite heroine, and her figure. She had been generously developed when Julia had first seen her, at eleven years old. Julia herself was still almost as flat as Betty’s ironing board.

‘You look,’ Julia said carefully, ‘as if … you’ve just spent a night in a doorway.’

‘And so do you, so there.’ They laughed at each other, and then Mattie ran, scrambling for the bus as it swayed towards them.

Julia felt deflated when she had gone. She picked up the cases yet again, and began to walk, aimlessly, looking into the windows of shops and offices as she passed by.

It was going to be a hot day. She felt the sun on the back of her neck, and the handles of the suitcases biting into yesterday’s tender patches. She slowed down and then jumped, startled by the sound of a horn hooting at the kerb beside her. She turned her head and saw a delivery van and a boy leaning out.

‘Where you going?’

Julia hesitated, then put the cases down. Why not the truth?

‘Nowhere much.’

‘Didn’t look like it. Come on, get in. I’ve got to make a delivery, then I’ll buy you a coffee.’

Julia smiled suddenly. It was easy to be friendly in the sunshine, with the people and traffic streaming around her. Her spirits lifted higher.

‘Okay.’ She perched in the passenger seat. They spun round Trafalgar Square where the fountains sparkled in the bright light. The boy whistled as they wove in and out of buses and taxis, and then they turned into a network of smaller streets. Julia saw little restaurants with waiters sweeping the steps ready for the day, and grocers’ shops with goods spilling out on the pavement, darker doorways, and a jumble of little shops selling everything from violins to surgical appliances. Julia had been here before, with Mattie. There were two cellar jazz-clubs in the next street, the goals of their Saturday night pilgrimages from home.

‘I know where we are. This is Soho.’

‘Right.’ The boy glanced at her, then jerked his head at her suitcases. ‘What are you doing, arriving or leaving?’

‘Oh, I’m arriving,’ Julia said firmly.

The van skidded to a stop in front of a window hung with dusty red plush curtains. Between the glass and the red folds there were pictures of girls, most of them, as far as Julia could see, adorned with feathers and nothing else. A sign at the top read GIRLS. NON-STOP GIRLS. GIRLS. A string of coloured light bulbs, unlit, added to the faintly depressing effect. The driver had jumped out, and he was heaving crates of drinks out of the back of the van. As soon as the stack was completed he began ferrying the crates in through the curtain-draped doorway. He winked at Julia. ‘Lots of ginger beer,’ he told her. ‘The girls drink it and charge the mugs for whisky.’

A swarthy man in a leather jacket came out and counted the crates in. The last one disappeared and Julia’s new friend tucked away a roll of pound notes.

‘Blue Heaven suit you?’ he enquired.

Anywhere with food and drink would have suited Julia at that moment, but she knew Blue Heaven because she had squeezed in there with Mattie, late at night. It looked the same as all the other coffee bars, with plastic-topped tables and spindly chairs, a long chrome-banded bar and a jungle of plants absorbing the light, but because of the crowds that packed into it, it seemed the model for the rest.

‘Suits me fine,’ Julia said. She left her suitcases in the van and crossed the road with him. It was still early, and Blue Heaven was almost empty. Julia chose a table, and sat down. The Gaggia machine hissed sharply and steam drifted between the rubber plants. The coffee came, creamy froth in a shallow glass cup, and a doughnut for Julia. She tried not to eye the glossy, sugary ball too greedily.

‘Go on,’ he ordered her. Julia didn’t need to be asked twice. Sugar stuck to her chin, and jam oozed deliciously.

‘You’re only a kid,’ he laughed, watching her.

‘I’m sixteen.’

‘Exactly.’

He stood up and leaned over the juke box, putting a coin in and stabbing the buttons without reading the tides. The record was Johnny Ray, ‘Such A Night’. Julia sighed happily, and licked her fingers.

‘I love Johnny Ray. Do you?’

‘Nope. It’s girls’ music. I put it on for you.’

‘What do you like, then?’

‘Jazz, of course.’

‘Trad?’

The bands played trad jazz in the packed clubs around the corner. Julia and Mattie could dance to it all night, if they were given the chance.

‘Modern, you goon. Dizzy Gillespie. Thelonius Monk.’

They talked about music, testing each other, until he looked at his watch.

‘Hey, I’ve got to get a move on.’

‘Who do you work for? Do they let you sit in coffee bars all morning?’

He frowned at her. ‘I work for myself, baby. It’s my van. I specialise in supplying anything to anyone who needs it.’ He was on his feet now. ‘I’m a fixer. And I’d better get fixing.’ He turned to go, then a thought struck him. ‘Are you short of money?’

Julia murmured, ‘A bit. Just until tonight. My friend will …’

He put his hand into the pocket of his blue jeans and peeled a note off the roll. ‘Here.’

‘I couldn’t—’

‘You could, and you will. Pay me back when you see me. I’m always around.’

He had reached the door before Julia called out, ‘I don’t even know your name.’

‘It’s Flowers. Johnny Flowers.’ He winked at her. ‘Sounds like a queen, doesn’t it? But I’m not. See you, kid. I’ll leave your bags with Mickey, across the road.’

He left Julia sitting at the table, wishing that he’d asked her what her name was. She watched him handing over her suitcases to the swarthy man behind the red curtain. Julia had liked Johnny Flowers enough to be sure that her bags would be safe wherever he left them. The van’s engine roared, and it rocketed away down the street. Julia sat still for a little while, listening to the juke box and watching the faces passing the windows of Blue Heaven. Then, with the security of Johnny Flowers’s pound note in her pocket, she ordered herself another cup of coffee and another doughnut. Later, she crossed the road again to Mickey’s. He peered at her from a cubbyhole off the entry. The place was very dark, and silent except for the sound of distant hoovering. Not quite non-stop girls, Julia thought. The strip club smelt of beer, smoke and dust.

‘Come for your stuff? It’s down there.’ He pointed his thick finger down behind a shelf of a desk.

‘Um. I wondered if could leave it here for a bit longer? It’s heavy to carry round.’

He looked carefully at her, examining everything except her face. ‘You a new girl?’

‘Er, yeah,’ Julia said ambiguously.

He clicked his tongue in disapproval. ‘Jesus, where does Monty find them? Infant school? All right, leave your gear here. I’ll keep an eye on it.’

‘Thanks.’

Julia slipped sideways out of the door before he could change his mind, or ask her anything else. The first thing she did was to head up Wardour Street into Oxford Street. Then she made her way to Mattie’s shoe shop. Peering through the plate glass window Julia saw her kneeling in front of a customer, with a sea of shoes spread all around them. She was holding a shoe in one hand and the other gesticulated as she talked. The woman listened intently, then took the shoe and tried it on again. Julia saw her nodding. A minute later she was on her way to the cash till, with Mattie bearing the shoes behind her.

Julia waited until the sale was completed and then she slipped into the shop. Mattie stared. ‘What are you doing in here?’ she hissed, and then added in a louder voice, ‘Black court shoes, madam?’

‘You look like a born saleswoman,’ Julia told her.

‘I’m an actress,’ Mattie said haughtily. ‘I can act saleswoman, of course.’

Julia took her hand and pressed something into it. Mattie looked down at the folded ten-shilling note.

‘It’s for your sandwiches at dinner time.’

‘How …?’

‘Tell you later. I don’t see anything I like the look of, thank you very much.’

Outside, looking between the cliffs of high buildings, Julia could just see trees in the distance. She remembered that it was Hyde Park, the sanctuary that they had failed to reach last night, and the greenness drew her. She walked towards it, slipping through the skeins of traffic at Marble Arch, and then crossing on to the grass. It was brown and parched by the sun, but the softness was welcome after the hot, hard pavements. She walked on, under the shadow of the great trees, until the roar of traffic in Park Lane diminished to a muffled hum. Water glinted coolly, and Julia guessed that the wide stretch of lake must be the Serpentine. There was a scatter of green canvas deckchairs under the trees overlooking it. She sank down in one of the chairs and paid threepence to an old man with a ticket machine. Then she closed her eyes and listened to the faint rustle of leaves over her head.

It was the first comfortable, solitary moment she had had to consider what had happened since leaving home.

She found herself wondering what her mother was doing.

It was easy to picture her. Perhaps she was dusting, picking up the ornaments from the tiled mantelpiece, very carefully, dusting each souvenir and china knick-knack before putting it back in exactly the same place. It was as if the house was always being made ready, cleaned and polished, for some big occasion that never came. Even the furniture, the settee and chairs with their cushions set at exact angles, seemed to wait tensely for inspection by guests who never materialised. Hardly anyone every came into the house, and when she was a little girl Julia was puzzled by her mother’s anxiety in the midst of their eventless lives. She was always being told not to make a mess when she played.

Don’t do that, Julia, it makes such a mess.

Betty wanted her to play neatly, setting her dolls out in rows. Julia’s own inclinations were for sand, and water, and poster paints that sent up plumes of brightly coloured powder when she poured in the water to mix them.

Once, Julia remembered, she had come home from a birthday party with a packet of shiny, coloured stars. With childish cunning she had hidden them from her mother, and then one afternoon she had shut herself into her bedroom and stuck them all over the wallpaper. They looked wonderful, like fireworks, jets of cobalt blue and scarlet against the insipid pink roses. Betty had grown suspicious, and she had forced the door open just as Julia was pressing the last gummy stars into place. Betty had flown across the room and started pulling them off, but the glue was surprisingly strong and it brought little star-shaped fragments of paper with it. Those that did come away left black marks.

Betty was angrier than Julia had ever seen her.

‘You little vandal,’ she hissed at her, and Julia recoiled in shock and surprise.

‘They looked pretty,’ she protested. ‘It’s my bedroom.’

‘Don’t you ever do that. Why do you spoil everything? Why do you?’ There were white flecks at the corners of her mother’s mouth, Julia remembered. ‘It isn’t your bedroom. Your father and I have given it to you, and you’ll keep it how we want it. Look at it now.’ Betty pointed at the wreckage of Julia’s fireworks, and then her face collapsed. She was crying, helplessly. Suddenly Julia caught a glimpse of her mother’s grown-up fears. She half-understood her struggle to keep everything that was lurid, and threatening, and incomprehensible, at bay with the semi-detached walls of their house. For an instant she understood what it must be like to be grown-up and still afraid, like Betty was.

She had run to her mother full of sympathy, but Betty was good at holding on to her anger and she had pushed her away. They had spent the rest of the day in silence, and when Vernon came home from work he turned Julia over his knee and smacked her with a slipper.

There must have been dozens of other times like that, Julia thought, and plenty of times when she had deserved whatever they had doled out to her. But that was the time that she remembered. Perhaps because of the embrace that Betty had rejected. Perhaps because of the glimpse of her mother’s fear.

Sitting in her deckchair, with the sun warming her face and arms, Julia remembered the old men on the Embankment. In the middle of her own night terrors she had recalled her mother’s too. Betty was afraid of everything, afraid that if she let any little detail out of place the long slide might begin, and leave her with nothing. Was that why she wouldn’t allow her daughter anything new, or different, or dangerous?

In the night Julia had determined I won’t let it get me. Not the darkness, nor the fear of it. And she had survived.

I won’t live like Betty, Julia promised herself. I won’t be afraid, and I can risk everything, if I have to.

She shivered a little, trying to imagine, looking ahead, beyond herself. But the sun made coin-bright circles under her closed eyelids, and that was all she could see.

After the stars, or perhaps all along only she couldn’t remember it, rebellion came naturally to Julia. As she grew older, there were more and more things to kick against. Looking back, the years seemed to stretch behind her as a long, entrenched battle against Betty’s strictures. In by eight. Bed by nine. Homework done on the day it was set. Julia challenged her on everything. They disagreed about her clothes, her make-up, the music she played, the hours she came in and went out again, and the places she went to. Betty and Vernon were proud that Julia had won a place at the girls’ grammar, but Mattie and Julia hated the place. They played truant and did no work, but even so Julia always came out near the top of her class.

The fights were tiring and boring, and Julia nearly always won them because she fought from strength. Betty was always forced to retrench and then capitulate.

And when Mattie came along, Julia had a natural ally. Mattie was an equally natural focus for the Smiths’ disapproval. She came from the despised estate, while the Smiths clung to the middle-class isolation of Fairmile Road. She wore her skirts too short, and too tightly belted so that they showed off her surprising breasts. And then there was the defiant mass of her hair. It was Mattie who produced the first Outdoor Girl cake mascara for Julia to try out, and quick-witted Mattie who yelled back at the boys who whistled at them in the High Street. But it was still Julia who was the leader, Julia had the ideas, and the determination to carry them out.

Betty had once said, with a sadness that Julia couldn’t fathom, ‘You’re not a bit like me.’

She could see her so clearly, in the house that gave Julia claustrophobia. A thin, small woman with a scarf knotted around her head to keep the dust out of her hair. Always stooping to tidy something away, or smooth a crease, or straighten an edge, her head bent so that the knobs in her neck stood out, the corners of her mouth always turned down.

I’m sorry, Julia thought. I couldn’t stay there with you. When Mattie came, after what Mattie had told her, the idea of escape had seemed so magnificent, so obvious and so enticing. There had been no alternative. No question even of waiting. With a single gesture, Betty and Fairmile Road and all the rest had been left behind her.

And yet, in spite of everything, Julia missed her.

I’ll come back, she promised. When I’ve got something worth showing you. You can be proud of me then, if you like. The words sounded grand in her head and she offered them to her mother in expiation.

Vernon was different. Julia had been afraid of her father, or of his slow-burning, malevolent temper. Betty was afraid of him too, she thought. She remembered how her mother cooked his tea, watching the clock all the time so that the food would be ready at exactly half past five. They ate their meal in silence while Vernon read the newspaper and Betty watched his plate, and the clock ticked far too loudly.

Julia didn’t miss Vernon at all.

The sun and her comfortable chair were making her feel drowsy. Her thoughts turned from her own home to Mattie’s. When she had first met her, years ago, Mattie had asked her home to tea. Julia had never ventured on to the estate before. The vast expanse of it startled her. There were thousands of houses, all the same, looking as if they had been dropped from the sky in endless lines. There were no trees to suggest that anything had existed there before the houses came, no corner shops to break the monotony. Mattie’s street was identical to all the others, but her house looked more neglected. The sooty patch of front garden was cluttered with junk and rusty bits of machinery.

Mattie flung the door open. ‘You’d better come in. Don’t take any notice of anything,’ she added, with an odd fierceness.

Julia couldn’t have avoided noticing the noise, and the smell of frying onions. There seemed to be children squirming everywhere, Mattie’s four smaller brother and sisters. Mattie picked the baby up and flung her in the air until she hiccupped with delight. In the kitchen Mattie’s eldest sister was standing at the stove. Mattie didn’t ask, but Rozzie announced, ‘He’s out.’

Mattie’s anxious fierceness disappeared at once. ‘Make yourself at home,’ she said hospitably.

Julia looked round. Every surface in the room was piled up with broken toys and dirty clothes and open packets of food. She had a brief vision of her mother’s kitchen where every jar had its place and the floor was rinsed down every day with a solution of bleach.

‘Where’s your mum?’ she asked. As soon as she had said it she knew that it was tactless. But Betty was such a fixture in Fairmile Road, with her dusters and her sewing and the Light Programme on the wireless, it was hard to understand the absence of a similar figure for Mattie.

‘She’s in the hospital,’ Mattie told her expressionlessly. ‘She’s given up.’ She waved her hand at the mess as she spoke, so that Julia might have thought that it was just tidiness Mrs Banner had given up on.

‘It’s ready,’ Rozzie announced.

They took their places at the table. Mattie hoisted the baby on to her lap and fed her with spoonfuls from her own plate. The children ate ravenously, and in between mouthfuls they asked Julia dozens of inquisitive questions. Mattie made up silly names for the teachers and the other girls at their school, and Julia turned them into impromptu rhymes. Everyone laughed uproariously. The atmosphere in the steamy room was cheerful, in spite of the mess and the variety of smells. The liver and onions tasted good, and the small portions were helped by piles of potatoes.

It was different from everything Julia knew about.

‘I liked it at your house,’ she said afterwards, and Mattie beamed at her, surprised and pleased. That first afternoon made a bond between the two girls that grew steadily stronger. When Mrs Banner died a year later, Mattie turned to Julia for comfort, and it was Mattie who reinforced Julia in her depressing battles with her parents.

But she never told me about her father, Julia thought.

Not until this week.

If it had been wrong to leave Betty so abruptly, it was unquestionably right to have come away with Mattie. Julia felt a sharp pull of love and sympathy and admiration for her. That, at least, was right.

And now they were here, and there would be no going back.

Together they would make it.

Sitting in her deckchair, frowning a little, Julia fell asleep.

‘I’m half dead,’ Mattie complained.

‘You’ll revive. It’s Saturday night.’

‘Easy for you to say, when you’ve been snoring all afternoon in the park.’

Julia met Mattie outside the shop at closing time. ‘I’ve sold fourteen pairs of shoes. The supervisor says I’ll get a bonus. There’s a perfect pair of black stilettos, you’ll love them. Shall I put them in the back for you?’

‘Don’t try and sell me your shoes, kid. I don’t need ’em.’

They laughed, and Julia put her arm through Mattie’s.

‘So how much have we got?’

With Mattie’s three days’ pay, and what was left of Johnny Flowers’s pound note (‘Why did you let him go?’ Mattie demanded. ‘He sounds just what we need.’) they had almost five pounds. They felt like Lady Docker.

‘Food,’ Mattie said decisively.

They made straight for the nearest fish and chip shop and ordered double portions of everything.

‘That,’ Mattie sighed later as she folded up the last triangle of bread and butter and bit into it, ‘was the best meal I have ever eaten. You’re right. I have revived.’

‘So what shall we do?’

‘We—ll. We could find somewhere to stay the night …’

‘Or we could go dancing, and then we needn’t go to bed at all.’

‘You’re right.’

‘Stick with me.’

It was still early, and they dawdled arm in arm along Oxford Street, then Julia steered them south into Wardour Street.

‘I’ve just thought. Where are the suitcases?’

‘We’re going to get them. This way.’

The strip joint had done its best to shake off its depressing aspect ready for the night’s trade. The coloured bulbs were lit, and flickered bravely. The lights were on inside too, and Mickey was wedged belligerently in the doorway behind a placard reading THE SAUCIEST SHOW IN TOWN.

He spotted Julia at once.

‘Here! Monty doesn’t know nothing about no new girl.’

Julia smiled, trying to dazzle him with charm.

‘I’m sorry. It was a mistake. Can we just take our cases out of your way …’

But Mickey was staring at Mattie. ‘Now you,’ he said, ‘are the sort of girl Monty always goes for. Looking for a job, are you?’

Mattie stuck her chin out. ‘Not your sort of job. Thanks very much.’

Julia retrieved the luggage and they retreated.

‘Come back any time you fancy,’ Mickey yelled after them. ‘You with the hair.’

They turned the corner and then stopped, giggling.

‘I can’t leave you alone for a single day, can I?’ Mattie teased. ‘Without you getting involved in a strip show. Fancy earning your living by taking your clothes off for a crowd of dirty men.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Julia answered light-heartedly. ‘Easier than hammering a typewriter all day. Or selling fourteen pairs of shoes.’

Mattie cocked her head.

‘Listen.’

It was music, drumming out somewhere below their feet.

‘Mmm.’ Julia tried out a few steps on the pavement. ‘And look.’

There was a dingy doorway sandwiched between two shops, with a temporary-looking notice pinned to the door.

NOW OPEN! THE ROCKET CLUB.

That was how they stumbled across it.

They had been heading round the corner to Cy Laurie’s, but the Rocket was there and in its opening week it was offering free membership to girls. Mattie and Julia didn’t need any more encouragement.

A flight of uneven steps led down to a white-painted cellar. There were tables around the walls, a bar selling soft drinks, and travel posters stuck on the walls for decoration. There was a trad jazz combo just hotting up, and people spinning and whirling in the white space.

They forgot everything, and launched themselves into the dance.

It was easy to forget, in those days.

The club filled up, and the heat and the pulsing rhythm and the exhilaration of dancing swept them up and created a separate, absorbing world. They danced with anyone who asked them, not noticing whether they were young or old or white or black, and when the supply of partners temporarily dried up they danced with each other.

It was a long, hot night and it went like a flash.

At a table against the wall, from behind a stub of candle jammed into a wine bottle, Felix Lemoine was watching them.

There were lots of girls a bit like them, he thought, but there was something about these two that singled them out. They were striking enough to look at, although their clothes were grubby and looked home-made. The taller one with the dark hair had an angular, arresting face that was almost beautiful, and a thin, restless body. Her friend was plainer, but her foaming mass of hair shone in the candlelight and she was a better dancer. She moved gracefully, holding her head up.

It wasn’t their appearances that interested him, Felix decided. It was their vitality. He could almost feel the crackle of it from where he sat. The two girls were absorbed in themselves, in their dancing and the world they had created, and they were careless of everything else. Felix liked that carelessness. He had already identified it as style.

He took a notepad and pencil out of his inner pocket, and began to draw.

When the drawing was finished he went on sitting there. It didn’t occur to him to ask one of them to dance.

He just watched, as he always did.