But by now he was speaking to the closing door.
Bonnie and Dinah slipped back into their friendship easily. It felt like they’d never been apart but even so, Bonnie searched for the right words to tell Dinah about Shirley. In the end, she just came out with it.
‘Remember the baby in the pushchair when we last met?’ Bonnie began.
Dinah nodded. ‘Such a sweet little thing. Who is she?’
‘She’s mine,’ said Bonnie, watching Dinah’s face carefully.
Dinah smiled. ‘I’m not surprised,’ she said. ‘She looked exactly like you. I would have been astonished if you had said any different.’
Bonnie’s jaw dropped. She hadn’t expected that at all. She’d been so sure Dinah would have been shocked, or called her a tart, or maybe walked out of the restaurant. ‘You knew …’
‘Not until I saw her,’ said Dinah. ‘I had no idea why you ran off like that. When your mother came to the store …’
‘My mother came to Hubbard’s?’ Bonnie interrupted.
‘She was really worried about you,’ said Dinah. ‘She asked all of us about you. Of course we didn’t know anything. You’re a bit of a dark horse, aren’t you?’ She laughed. ‘What did you call her?’
‘Shirley.’
‘Shirley. I like that name. After Shirley Temple, is it?’
Bonnie shook her head. ‘To be honest I never thought of that. I just like the name.’
‘She’s George’s child, I take it.’
It was then that Bonnie decided to tell Dinah everything. She began with Lady Brayfield, that awful Mother and Baby Home, the nursery and the fact that she was now working towards her NNEB. She explained that it was such a new innovation, having only come about because wartime experiences had forced the government to realise that they needed a recognised qualification for those who cared for children.
Dinah was impressed. ‘I’m so glad you were able to piece your life together so well after what happened to George.’
Bonnie froze. ‘What happened to George?’ she repeated. ‘What are you talking about?’
The waitress interrupted them by taking away their dirty plates. ‘Would you like desserts?’
Dinah shook her head. ‘Not for me, how about you?’
Bonnie shook her head as well. She wished the waitress away,to the far side of the moon if necessary. Something had happened to George. Had he married someone else, had a car accident, broken his leg, or what? Perhaps he hadn’t deserted her after all. Was Dinah going to tell her he’d got TB or some other dreadful illness and was languishing in some hospital somewhere?
‘More tea?’ said the waitress. ‘Or can I get you a coffee?’
‘Coffee,’ said Dinah. She glanced at Bonnie who just stared back at her with a blank expression. ‘Make that two coffees,’ she called as the waitress hurried away.
‘What happened to George?’ said Bonnie. Her voice was urgent.
‘My dear,’ said Dinah. ‘Of course, you can’t possibly know, can you? I think you’d better brace yourself for some bad news.’ She leaned forward and held Bonnie’s hand. ‘There’s no easy way to say this, but George is dead.’
Bonnie felt the room sway. Her dinner churned uncomfortably in her stomach and she felt cold and clammy. She was going to be sick. She rose from the table looking around desperately for the cloakroom sign and then ran between the tables towards it like a woman possessed.
John Finley went to the sitting room where his mother sat with her sewing. It was a much cosier room than his father’s, with a stone fireplace and deep chairs drowning in chintz-covered cushions. There was a roaring fire in the hearth.
‘Hello, dear.’ She glanced up from her embroidery as he came into the room. ‘Finished your talk with your father?’
He marvelled that she was always so calm. His altercations with his father always left him angry and frustrated. It was totally ridiculous. He was a man now. He’d fought the bloody Germans and yet Norris had this … power over him. He had no desire to follow in the old man’s footsteps, but he just couldn’t make him see that. To John’s way of thinking, his mother had a bit of a dog’s life, always having to fall in with the old man’s plans, and yet she was never flustered. These days she seemed to be a very contented person, although he couldn’t understand for the life of him why.
He flopped into a chair and stretched out his legs. ‘I’ve just told the old man I’m an actor.’
His mother looked at him over the rim of her glasses. ‘Good for you,’ she said, ‘but I’d much rather hear about the girl who has put that twinkle in your eye.’
How Bonnie got from Lyons Corner House to Dinah’s flat in Primrose Hill she hardly knew. She allowed herself to be bundled into a taxi but she remembered little of the journey. The flat was on the first floor, or was it the second? She could only remember a lot of stairs.
Dinah was apologising that it was so small, but Bonnie couldn’t focus her mind on anything except what she had told her in the restaurant.
George is dead. George is dead.
It banged around her head like a dinner gong.
George is dead, dead, dead.
She kept asking stupid questions. ‘How can you be so sure it was him?’ ‘Did the police actually see his body?’ ‘How can they be sure he’s dead?’ Every time she asked, Dinah answered her but the words didn’t go in.
She had developed a terrible gnawing emptiness in her chest and the pain around her heart was so unbearable she honestly wanted to die herself.
Once she reached the flat, Bonnie allowed herself to give way to her tears. She cried solidly for half an hour. It left her with a terrible headache and feeling cold and clammy. After a while, someone came into the room and gave her an injection and everything went still.
When she woke up, the room was getting dark. She sat up suddenly and realised that although she was fully dressed apart from her shoes, she was under a pink satin bedcover. It took a few minutes to understand where she was and why and then the terrible grief came flooding back in, crushing her spirit and driving the breath from her body. He was dead. Her lovely, fun-loving George was dead. Shirley would never know her father, never call him Daddy. She closed her eyes and imagined her daughter, their daughter, just a little bit older, maybe three or four, in a meadow with the sun streaming down. She was chasing butterflies among the flowers, running along in that endearing way small children do and giggling as she went. Then George came up behind her and swept her into his arms, twirling her around as she gasped, ‘Put me down, Daddy, put me down …’
Bonnie swung her feet over the edge of the bed and back into the here and now. That would never happen, would it? George was dead. She sighed. She had to get back to Shirley. She had told Nancy she would be back in time to put her to bed.
The door opened very slowly and the light from another room flooded in.
‘Oh, you’re awake.’
‘What time is it?’
There was a pause and then Dinah said, ‘Five thirty.’
Bonnie shot to her feet. ‘I have to get back to the nursery.’ She swayed and her head began to spin.
Dinah rushed to her side. ‘You’re in no fit state to go anywhere. You’ve had a massive shock. I had to call my doctor and he gave you something to calm you down.’
‘But I have to bath Shirley and put her to bed. I’m her mummy. She’s expecting me.’
‘Give me the telephone number,’ said Dinah, pushing Bonnie gently into a sitting position. ‘I’ll explain everything.’
‘I need to know about George,’ said Bonnie, her eyes filling with tears again.
‘I know, darling. I know.’
As soon as she’d told Matron, Dinah made some tea and telephoned John. They had planned to meet later that evening. Dinah quickly explained what had happened.
‘John, please don’t rush back to London,’ she said. ‘I can’t leave Bonnie. She’s in such a state. She had no idea her boyfriend was dead.’
‘Her boyfriend?’ said John.
‘Shirley’s father,’ Dinah explained. ‘The man they found in your father’s cold storage room.’
‘Good God!’ exclaimed John. ‘How absolutely bloody.’
‘I know,’ said Dinah. ‘You do understand, don’t you, darling?’
‘Of course,’ said John. ‘Give her my love.’
Dinah put the phone down and went back to Bonnie. Clasping her hand gently, she began to tell her all that she knew.
‘But I went to the factory,’ Bonnie protested. ‘I finished work early. I went to his digs and he wasn’t there so I went on to the factory.’
‘He was found in the cold room at the back,’ said Dinah.
‘I didn’t go right inside,’ Bonnie admitted. ‘There was some horrible chap there throwing stuff around. He shouted at me and I fled.’ She frowned. ‘What’s a cold room?’
‘They used to store valuable fur coats there in the summer.’
Bonnie was hardly listening. ‘Was there an inquest?’
Dinah stared at Bonnie’s hands in hers. ‘It was an open verdict.’
‘So they don’t really know how he died.’
There was a pause and then Dinah said, ‘Did you get a good look at this man?’
Bonnie shook her head. ‘He was wearing a sort of brown coat overall. I didn’t see his face. He had a funny cap pulled down over his eyes.’
‘What sort of cap?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Bonnie. ‘It wasn’t the usual sort of cap men wear. It looked … odd. Like a train driver or something.’ She put her hand on her forehead. ‘Oh I don’t know. I can’t think.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Dinah softly. ‘He may not …’
‘He may not have been dead then,’ said Bonnie bitterly. ‘And if I’d stayed I might have saved him.’
‘I wasn’t going to say that,’ Dinah said. ‘He may not have even been in the factory. He could have been put there or even gone there, later. It seems to be the general consensus of opinion that the door closed on him and nobody knew he was there.’
Bonnie blew her nose again. ‘I can’t believe he’s dead.’
‘You must concentrate on Shirley,’ said Dinah. ‘You’ve managed without him this far. Nothing’s changed.’
‘Everything has changed,’ Bonnie protested.
‘No it hasn’t,’ Dinah insisted. ‘He was dead back then, darling. The only thing that’s altered is that now you know it.’
Bonnie nodded. She was right.
‘Have an early night,’ said Dinah, ‘and then I’ll get you back to the nursery tomorrow. It’s all a bit bloody to start with, but you will get through it, I promise. Just thank God you’ve got Shirley.’
Bonnie knew then that Dinah was thinking about her own poor husband who had died in the war. After a whirlwind courtship, they had had only five weeks of marriage before he was blown up in a convoy bringing much needed food supplies from Spain and Portugal on the Lisbon Run. He’d gone before Dinah had got pregnant and, as miserable as she felt, Bonnie knew she was right.
‘Yes,’ she said, smiling at her friend. ‘Thank God for Shirley.’
It wasn’t going to be easy getting into the office. Grace had no real reason to be there. Factory floor workers only went upstairs if they were summoned for some reason.
She’d thought about confiding in Snowy but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Somehow, while her fears and suspicions were constantly on her mind, they were manageable so long as they stayed in her head. Once she’d voiced them, her greatest fear was that they would take on a life of their own. Thinking bad thoughts was not nearly as terrible as speaking them. Much as she would welcome Snowy’s clear thinking and wise advice, Grace couldn’t bring herself to confide in her.
Apparently the petition had gone to the Fair Rents panel and everybody who had signed had their fingers crossed. There weren’t as many names as Archie had hoped for but together they made a bigger voice than one lone complaint. Grace wished now that she’d been a part of it.
By the time Easter was on the horizon, Grace was getting desperate. Norris would be back any time now and she still hadn’t got the locket. The thought of doing more ‘cleaning’ with him quite frankly made her feel ill.
As it turned out, it was Snowy who enabled her, albeit unwittingly, to get into the office. Norah Fox was away. She’d had a bereavement in the family and had taken the day off for the funeral. Her absence led to a much more relaxed atmosphere on the factory floor. Too relaxed as it turned out, because Polly Reynolds got her fingers caught up in the machine. Her terrified screams brought everybody running and the production line was halted. Grace was sent upstairs to get help.
As she burst through the office door, Miss Samuels was leaning over the open safe.
‘Polly’s got herself trapped in the machine,’ Grace blurted out.
Miss Samuels stood up. ‘Where’s Norah?’
‘She’s got a day off, remember?’
Another wail from downstairs made Miss Samuels’s face go pale and she rushed past Grace and headed for the stairs. Grace made as if to follow but stopped by the door. There was pandemonium downstairs. Polly was screaming, more out of fear than pain, and people were beginning to argue about what to do. Snowy was barking orders. They didn’t need another person down there and the safe door was still wide open. Grace darted back. It was now or never. She wouldn’t get another chance like this.
There was a box of money at the front. Grace put it onto the floor and began to rummage through the papers underneath. Where was the little brown envelope? Her hands were trembling so much she could hardly make them work. If Miss Samuels came back, she’d get the sack immediately. She’d be caught red-handed with her hand in the safe. She might even get arrested and end up with her name in the paper.
She could hear Miss Samuels’s voice above the others now. ‘Go and get the first aid box.’
Careful not to disturb the piles too much, Grace carried on. Right at the back of the safe, her fingers touched something quite large. She pulled it towards the light and gasped. It was her Thrift Club moneybag, the one that had been stolen. What on earth was it doing in Norris’s safe? She opened up the flap and looked inside. The little envelopes were still there, all torn open, but the money was all gone. Puzzled, she frowned but her brain refused to function. Why did Norris have it? Had he found it? If so, why didn’t he tell her?