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Authors: Natalie Meg Evans
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betrayed her. If he had, she hadn’t a true friend in the world.
‘Somebody left the key in the wardrobe and I heard you’d been hanging about the place. Since Donal wasn’t likely to be dressing up in my things, it had to be you. So? I’d say a fiver for a day’s hire. It should be twice that, except I know you’ll have lost all your money on one horse. You’ve no more sense than – what?’ Anger flared in Sheila’s eyes. ‘What have you got to grin at?’
‘You. I reckon that when it comes to being a self-righteous prig, you take the biscuit, Sheila Flynn.’ Cora gestured to her father, and took a deep breath. ‘When it comes to theft, he takes all the bloody biscuits. He’s been living off my earnings since I left school. Marry him? You need your head examined. He might say he’s in love and buy you a few fancy dresses, but give it a couple of years, you’ll be stuck with your arms in the wash-tub, looking forward to a black eye every Saturday night. Men like him—’
They don’t change. It sighed through her mind, above the screeching wheels of a passing locomotive. The building shook and the roof panels made the noise of a saw cutting bones. He’s taken your life and he won’t change.
The sound came not from within her head, but from the darkness in front of her feet. Obeying an impulse she didn’t fully understand, she flashed her torch beam over the floor bricks. Laid in herringbone pattern, fifteen years of Jac in his work-boots had pressed them into the soft earth. Something odd . . . an area in the middle had sunk in the shape of a church window, narrow at the top, wide at the bottom. ‘What’s under there, Dad?’
‘ Salope! ’ Jac spat the horrible word at her. ‘What right have you to question me? Sheila has told me everything about you, how you go with men – with sailors.’
‘I darn well don’t!’ One sailor only, and she’d really liked him. He’d been gentle.
Jac hawked in her direction. ‘Stumbling on to the dock, looking for a tart to stick it in, they find you!’
‘That isn’t nice, Jac.’ Sheila crimped her lips, but her distaste was for Cora. ‘But now we’re speaking of it, you were seen on Coronation night, back in May, going with a boy off a ship—’
‘A filthy foreigner!’ Jac leaped in. ‘At least your mother whored with her own kind.’ Suddenly they were moving towards her. Had Jac seen something in her face to threaten him? Was he stoking his anger to justify an explosion of violence? Cora knew that her father meant to harm her and that Sheila wouldn’t stop him. If anything, Sheila’s coy smile was egging him on. Go on, Jac , she seemed to be saying. You’ve done it before.
Cora saw the game’s end quite clearly. ‘Get out!’ a voice screamed in her head. She dropped her torch and ran. Outside, confused by the dark, she dithered, then let her feet do the thinking. She ran towards Bermondsey Street and Pettrew’s. If necessary, she could scale the factory wall and hide in one of the outbuildings. At Pettrew’s gates, she listened for the sounds of pursuit.
All she could hear was her own heart. She said farewell to the chimneys and the forbidding, black windows, knowing she’d sewn her last hatband – never would she be assistant forelady under Miss McCullum.
CHAPTER 3
PARIS, 16 JUNE 1937
Coralie de Lirac woke by degrees until the smell of laundered cotton reminded her that she was in her bedroom, in the Hôtel Duet. Banking her pillows behind her, she inhaled a waft of rose-attar. ThornlessZéphirine Drouhins in a vase on the dressing-table had transformed into organza crinolines as she slept.
The moments before the day asserted itself gave her time to believe in her new existence. To those left behind in London, it must seem that Cora Masson had simply vanished. It was true. Cora Masson no longer existed.
She mentally reassembled her surroundings, beginning with walls of watered silk, wedding-veil curtains and a Chinese
‘Somebody left the key in the wardrobe and I heard you’d been hanging about the place. Since Donal wasn’t likely to be dressing up in my things, it had to be you. So? I’d say a fiver for a day’s hire. It should be twice that, except I know you’ll have lost all your money on one horse. You’ve no more sense than – what?’ Anger flared in Sheila’s eyes. ‘What have you got to grin at?’
‘You. I reckon that when it comes to being a self-righteous prig, you take the biscuit, Sheila Flynn.’ Cora gestured to her father, and took a deep breath. ‘When it comes to theft, he takes all the bloody biscuits. He’s been living off my earnings since I left school. Marry him? You need your head examined. He might say he’s in love and buy you a few fancy dresses, but give it a couple of years, you’ll be stuck with your arms in the wash-tub, looking forward to a black eye every Saturday night. Men like him—’
They don’t change. It sighed through her mind, above the screeching wheels of a passing locomotive. The building shook and the roof panels made the noise of a saw cutting bones. He’s taken your life and he won’t change.
The sound came not from within her head, but from the darkness in front of her feet. Obeying an impulse she didn’t fully understand, she flashed her torch beam over the floor bricks. Laid in herringbone pattern, fifteen years of Jac in his work-boots had pressed them into the soft earth. Something odd . . . an area in the middle had sunk in the shape of a church window, narrow at the top, wide at the bottom. ‘What’s under there, Dad?’
‘ Salope! ’ Jac spat the horrible word at her. ‘What right have you to question me? Sheila has told me everything about you, how you go with men – with sailors.’
‘I darn well don’t!’ One sailor only, and she’d really liked him. He’d been gentle.
Jac hawked in her direction. ‘Stumbling on to the dock, looking for a tart to stick it in, they find you!’
‘That isn’t nice, Jac.’ Sheila crimped her lips, but her distaste was for Cora. ‘But now we’re speaking of it, you were seen on Coronation night, back in May, going with a boy off a ship—’
‘A filthy foreigner!’ Jac leaped in. ‘At least your mother whored with her own kind.’ Suddenly they were moving towards her. Had Jac seen something in her face to threaten him? Was he stoking his anger to justify an explosion of violence? Cora knew that her father meant to harm her and that Sheila wouldn’t stop him. If anything, Sheila’s coy smile was egging him on. Go on, Jac , she seemed to be saying. You’ve done it before.
Cora saw the game’s end quite clearly. ‘Get out!’ a voice screamed in her head. She dropped her torch and ran. Outside, confused by the dark, she dithered, then let her feet do the thinking. She ran towards Bermondsey Street and Pettrew’s. If necessary, she could scale the factory wall and hide in one of the outbuildings. At Pettrew’s gates, she listened for the sounds of pursuit.
All she could hear was her own heart. She said farewell to the chimneys and the forbidding, black windows, knowing she’d sewn her last hatband – never would she be assistant forelady under Miss McCullum.
CHAPTER 3
PARIS, 16 JUNE 1937
Coralie de Lirac woke by degrees until the smell of laundered cotton reminded her that she was in her bedroom, in the Hôtel Duet. Banking her pillows behind her, she inhaled a waft of rose-attar. ThornlessZéphirine Drouhins in a vase on the dressing-table had transformed into organza crinolines as she slept.
The moments before the day asserted itself gave her time to believe in her new existence. To those left behind in London, it must seem that Cora Masson had simply vanished. It was true. Cora Masson no longer existed.
She mentally reassembled her surroundings, beginning with walls of watered silk, wedding-veil curtains and a Chinese
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