A Nightingale Christmas Promise Page 5

  Eleanor folded her arms across her chest. ‘I thought you said it wasn’t bad news?’

  ‘She’s not seriously ill. But I still have to go.’

  Anna went to move on, hoping Eleanor would follow her, but she stood her ground.

  ‘In that case, surely you can spare an hour or two?’ she said. ‘It’s for the boys—’

  ‘Look,’ Sadie turned on her. ‘I’ve already told you, I can’t come.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You’ll have to find someone else to pack your food parcels or darn your socks, or whatever else it is you’re doing today!’ Sadie slammed the door in Eleanor’s face with a resounding crash.

  ‘Well!’ Eleanor stood still, staring at the door. The shocked expression on her face was so priceless Anna had to stifle a smile with the back of her hand.

  Eleanor was still fuming about it later as they set off across the park with the other girls. She strode in front, Anna hurrying to keep up with her. Miriam and Grace trailed along at the back, as Grace had somehow managed to twist her ankle coming down the stairs.

  ‘Sick friend indeed!’ Eleanor huffed. ‘I don’t believe a word of it!’

  ‘But why would she lie about it?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Because lying is second nature to her sort,’ Miriam said.

  Anna looked over her shoulder at her. ‘And what sort is that?’

  Miriam and Eleanor looked at each other.

  ‘Common,’ Miriam said.

  ‘That’s a bit unfair, don’t you think?’ Grace cried. ‘She seems nice to me.’

  ‘And me,’ Anna said.

  ‘I didn’t say she wasn’t, did I?’ Miriam snapped. ‘I just said she doesn’t have the same manners as the rest of us. She’s not been brought up the way we have.’

  ‘Don’t forget she’s a factory girl,’ Eleanor put in. ‘She told me she’d got her Matric at night school. Can you imagine?’

  She made it sound like a criticism. Anna couldn’t understand why.

  ‘If you ask me, there’s a man involved,’ Miriam said.

  ‘She doesn’t have a young man,’ Grace said. ‘I’ve asked her.’

  ‘It might be a secret admirer?’ Miriam said.

  ‘But why would she need to keep it a secret?’ Anna wondered.

  ‘Perhaps he’s married?’

  Anna gasped. ‘No!’

  She looked at Eleanor but her friend merely nodded, lips pursed. ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised,’ she said. ‘As I said, there’s a reason she hasn’t come with us, and it’s got nothing to do with visiting a sick friend.’

  Anna was silent for a moment, taking it all in. She looked around at the other girls. They all seemed so certain about it. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said.

  ‘That’s because you’re a good person, and you like to think the best of people,’ Eleanor said. ‘But you mark my words – Sadie Sedgewick is hiding something.’

  Chapter Five

  The police station was dark and shabby, the air rank with stale sweat and alcohol from the drunks sleeping it off in the cells.

  Sadie looked up at the clock ticking ponderously on the wall above the desk. It was nearly four o’clock. She would not be back for tea at Porthleven House. Her backside felt numb from sitting for so long on the hard wooden bench. In her hand she still clutched the note her mother’s friend Belle had sent her.

  ‘How much longer?’ she asked the desk sergeant for the third time.

  Sergeant Lomax looked up from his ledger. He was a wiry man, his narrow, foxy face half-obscured by gingery whiskers. Sadie knew him well from all her previous visits to the police station. ‘In a hurry, are you?’

  ‘I am, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Well, I beg your pardon, I’m sure. But perhaps if that mother of yours didn’t go plying her trade down the docks in broad daylight, you wouldn’t be so inconvenienced!’

  Sadie ignored his contemptuous sneer. She had no time for Sergeant Lomax. Most of the Old Bill at Bethnal Green nick were decent enough, but there was something about Lomax that repulsed her. Belle had told her none of the dock girls liked him. He was too fond of a free grope, they said.

  She thought about the other girls back at the hospital. No doubt Eleanor Copeland would have something to say about her not helping out at the Red Cross Sewing Drive. Sadie could just imagine them all gossiping about her, wondering why she had disappeared so suddenly.

  She crumpled the note in her fist. She had to smile, wondering what Eleanor would say if she could see her now, waiting at the nick to bail out her mother yet again.

  She looked back at the clock. Nearly twenty past four. She had been waiting long enough, she decided.

  ‘And where do you think you’re going?’ Sergeant Lomax said as Sadie got to her feet.

  ‘I’ve had enough of waiting. I told you, I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘Keep her here as long as you like. You can throw away the key as far as I’m concerned.’

  Sergeant Lomax’s mouth curled. ‘You’re a fine daughter, ain’t you?’

  ‘She’s a fine mother, too.’

  ‘All right, then.’ The desk sergeant closed his ledger with a thud. ‘Machin?’ he summoned one of the young PCs with a nod over his shoulder. ‘Go down to the cells and fetch Lily Sedgewick, would you? I reckon she’s had enough time to cool off by now.’

  Sadie frowned. ‘I thought you said she had to wait for the superintendent?’

  Lomax laughed. ‘As if the superintendent would want to be bothered with a scabby old dock dolly! No, she tried to sink her teeth into PC Brennan’s arm while he was arresting her, so I thought I’d give her a bit of time to consider her actions.’

  ‘You mean you’ve kept me here all this time for nothing?’

  ‘Maybe I just like your company?’ He leered across the desk at her.

  The suggestive way he looked her up and down made Sadie’s skin crawl, but she was determined not to show it. Squaring her shoulders, she faced him boldly. ‘Go on, then. Have a look. It’s as far as you’ll ever get.’

  ‘I dunno about that. You’re your mother’s daughter, ain’t you? And I know for a fact Lily Sedgewick ain’t fussy!’

  Sadie stared back at him with contempt. ‘I wouldn’t let you lay a finger on me even if you was paying for it!’

  Before he had a chance to reply, PC Machin came up the steps from the cells with Sadie’s mother in tow. Lily Sedgewick looked even more of a mess than usual. Her heavy make-up made her look older than her forty years, thick powder settling into the careworn folds of her face, her scarlet lipstick fanning out in the tiny lines around her thin lips. Her artfully teased hair was as dry and brittle as straw. Even across the reception hall, Sadie could smell the stale drink coming off her as she wriggled in PC Machin’s grasp.

  ‘Get off me, Peter Machin!’ she hissed. ‘I can walk by myself, thank you very much.’ She looked the picture of injured dignity, in spite of her unkempt appearance.

  PC Machin mumbled something Sadie couldn’t hear.

  ‘Don’t you come it with me, boy,’ Lily Sedgewick snapped back. ‘I knew you when you was a little kid on the streets, wetting your trousers ’cos the bigger lads were chucking stones at you!’

  Peter Machin blushed so deeply, Sadie couldn’t help smiling in spite of herself. She had grown up with Peter, sat in front of him at primary school. They’d played out together until his mother decided she didn’t want her son associating with a dock dolly’s daughter.

  He caught Sadie’s eye and his blush deepened, his ears turning scarlet beneath his neatly cropped dark hair.

  ‘She’s all yours,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Until she goes to court on Friday,’ Sergeant Lomax chimed in.

  Sadie’s mother glared at him. ‘You’ll be wasting the judge’s time. I was only waiting for a bus.’

  ‘And I s’pose that sailor was just keeping you company?’

  Lily Sedgewick looked huffy. ‘Ai
n’t no law against talking, is there?’

  Sensing her mother was squaring up for another fight, Sadie said, ‘Let’s go, shall we?’

  Lily marched out ahead of her, making a rude gesture at Sergeant Lomax as she went. Fortunately, the desk sergeant had gone back to consulting his ledger and didn’t notice. But Peter Machin did. Sadie saw him shake his head, his cheeks growing even more scarlet.

  ‘Where’s Belle?’ her mother demanded, as soon as they were outside.

  ‘She didn’t have the cash to bail you out, so she sent me instead. It’s all right, you don’t have to thank me,’ Sadie called out as Lily marched off down the road.

  ‘I didn’t ask you to come.’

  ‘In that case, I won’t bother next time!’

  ‘Please yourself.’

  Sadie followed her down the street. ‘What were you doing down the docks, anyway?’

  ‘Have a guess.’

  ‘I thought you’d stopped all that?’

  ‘Yes, well, I needed the money, didn’t I?’

  ‘What about Mr Wonderful? Keeping you short again, is he?’

  Her mother’s face coloured under its thick coating of powder. ‘If you must know, Jimmy’s gone,’ she muttered.

  Sadie’s heart lifted. ‘Gone? Gone where?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Lily couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘He’s had to make himself scarce.’

  ‘So he’s in trouble with the police again?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that.’

  You never do, Sadie thought. Her mother could give the three wise monkeys a run for their money when she felt like it.

  ‘How long has he been gone?’

  ‘I dunno, do I?’ Lily shrugged. ‘About a week.’

  ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t come back.’

  Her mother gave her a sombre look. ‘You mustn’t say that,’ she warned. ‘If he ever found out you’d been talking about him like that—’

  Sadie’s chin lifted. ‘I ain’t afraid of him.’

  ‘You should be,’ her mother said quietly.

  Lily Sedgewick lodged in a squalid, rundown tenement house close to the docks. The window frames were rotten, and the paint on the front door had peeled so much it was hard to tell what colour it had once been.

  As she lifted the latch on the front door, Lily threw over her shoulder, ‘Are you coming in, or what?’

  ‘I might, since you’ve asked so nicely.’

  Inside it stank of boiled cabbage and cat’s pee. Damp bloomed on the faded wallpaper. From somewhere deep in the house a baby was wailing.

  Belle was waiting for them in her mother’s two rooms on the top floor. She was kneeling on the threadbare rug, making up the fire.

  ‘All right, girl? I was wondering when you’d turn up,’ she greeted Lily cheerfully. ‘Thought I’d pop round and get a fire going, give you a nice welcome.’

  ‘Thanks, mate.’ Lily sat down in the solitary armchair and held her hands out to the flames to warm them. Even in her heavy coat, she looked painfully thin. Sadie wondered when she had last eaten. ‘That cell was bloody cold. Played hell with my rheumatism, it did.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. There’s no meat on you. The cold’ll go straight through to your bones. Here, put this blanket round you, warm you up a bit.’ Sadie watched Belle fussing over her friend. She was only a few years older than Lily Sedgewick, but she looked after her like a mother. In spite of her kindness, though, Sadie knew there was nothing soft about Belle. She had a reputation for being hard as nails. Sadie had seen her pull another dock girl’s hair out by the roots in a cat fight.

  ‘Who collared you?’ Belle asked.

  ‘That new bloke – what’s his name? Brennan. He’s a bit keen. Most of them know to turn a blind eye, but not him.’

  ‘I suppose he just wants to make a name for himself,’ Belle said.

  ‘He’ll think twice about collaring me next time, I reckon,’ Lily cackled. ‘Took a bite out of his arm, I did. Nearly went through to the bone!’

  ‘No! Blimey, Lil, you don’t know your own strength!’

  Sadie listened to them talk, wondering once again what Eleanor Copeland would make of it all. Those big eyes of hers would pop out of her head, she decided.

  ‘It’s lucky your Sadie was there to help out,’ Belle said. ‘I’m boracic myself.’

  Lily grunted in response.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Sadie said to her mother, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

  There was a long silence. Her mother kept her face averted, gazing into the sputtering flames.

  Belle rose to her feet. ‘Tell you what, why don’t I put the kettle on? I reckon we could all do with a nice cuppa.’

  ‘Sod that. I need something stronger.’ Lily got up and went to the cupboard where she kept her gin bottle. Sadie watched her tipping it into a chipped china cup.

  ‘That’ll do you a lot of good,’ she remarked.

  Lily spared her a glowering look. ‘I’ve had a shock, all right?’

  ‘A shock!’ Sadie mocked her. ‘I would have thought you’d be used to it by now. You sleep in that cell more often than you do your own bed.’

  ‘Listen to her! So high and mighty. Far too good for the likes of us, Belle.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be difficult,’ Sadie murmured.

  Belle sent her a reproachful look then turned back to Lily, who was already refilling her glass. Her hands were shaking so much the neck of the bottle clashed against the china.

  ‘Steady on, Lil.’ Belle looked nervous. ‘Maybe you should lay off for now?’

  ‘Don’t you start!’ Lily waved the bottle at her. ‘I have enough earache from that one, without you getting on at me. You’re supposed to be my mate!’

  Sadie sighed. ‘Let her be, Belle. If she wants to drink herself to death then that’s her look out. Don’t tell her off on my account. I’ve spent half my life watching her getting pie-eyed!’

  ‘Oh, haven’t you had a hard life!’ her mother sneered.

  ‘I have, as a matter of fact,’ Sadie replied quietly.

  Lily turned away, downing her gin.

  ‘Any word from Jimmy, Lil?’ Belle changed the subject.

  She shook her head. ‘Not a dicky bird.’

  ‘Old Bill has been round to see me. Wanted to see if I knew anything.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘Same as always. I didn’t see or hear anything.’ Lily paused for a moment, then said, ‘You know he died – the old man from the post office? A stroke, so they say, brought on by the shock.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  Sadie looked from one to the other of them. ‘What’s this?’

  She saw the warning look Lily shot at Belle over the rim of her cup.

  ‘Nothing,’ Belle said. ‘It’s nothing. Just a bit of gossip, that’s all.’

  But Sadie had already guessed the truth. ‘So that’s why Jimmy’s disappeared,’ she said. ‘He killed someone.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ her mother answered quickly. ‘That old man should never have fought back. If he’d just done as he was told … there was no need for anyone to get hurt.’

  Sadie looked at her with contempt. ‘That’s never stopped Jimmy giving you a beating, has it?’

  Lily stared down into her drink. ‘You know nothing about it,’ she muttered.

  ‘I reckon I do,’ Sadie fired back. ‘I lived with you both long enough. I’ve been watching him giving you hidings since I was ten years old!’

  Her mother said nothing. Her mouth was a tight line, the way it always was when Sadie spoke up against her precious Jimmy Clyde.

  ‘I’ll go and make that tea.’

  Belle started to get up, but Sadie said, ‘Don’t bother, I ain’t stopping.’

  Belle looked disappointed. ‘But I was looking forward to having a good chinwag. We wanted to hear all about how you’ve been getting on at the hospital, didn’t we, Lil?’

  Sadie caught the pleading look Belle gave her
mother. Lily’s face remained blank, indifferent.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said to Belle. ‘I know she ain’t interested in me.’

  ‘Don’t be like that, love,’ Belle pleaded, but Sadie was already on her feet, putting on her coat.

  ‘Let her go.’ Lily’s voice was dulled by gin. ‘I don’t need her here, looking down on me.’

  ‘It ain’t difficult, the state of you!’ Sadie snapped back. She took some money out of her purse and laid it on the table. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Save you earning it down the docks.’

  ‘I don’t want your money.’

  ‘Go on, take it. Or are you only interested in cash that’s come from robbing old men?’

  ‘Cheeky cow!’ her mother muttered as Sadie left.

  Belle followed her out, clattering down the stairs after her.

  ‘I’m sorry about your mum,’ she said. ‘She’s just in a bit of a state, that’s all.’

  ‘Stop making excuses for her, Belle. We both know what my mother’s like.’ Sadie took some more coins out of her purse and handed them over. ‘Here, take these. Look after her. Make sure she eats something, and stick some pennies in the meter. She’ll only drink away what I’ve left for her.’

  ‘Thanks, love. I’ll take care of her, I promise.’

  ‘I know you will, Belle.’ The other woman had been looking after Lily for years, ever since she first found her as a frightened young girl by the docks. Belle had watched over the newcomer then, showed her the ropes, taught her how to stay alive. And she had been doing it ever since.

  But Belle couldn’t save Lily from herself, any more than Sadie could.

  As she left, Belle said, ‘You’re a good girl, Sadie.’

  ‘Tell that to my mother.’

  ‘She already knows.’

  ‘Funny she never says it, then.’

  ‘You know what your mum’s like. She’s proud.’

  ‘Proud!’ Sadie laughed bitterly. ‘What’s she got to be proud about? Anyway,’ she shrugged, ‘I don’t care what she thinks of me.’

  Belle smiled. ‘You two are as bad as each other. You’re too alike, that’s your trouble.’

  You’re wrong about that, Sadie thought as she made her way up the narrow, damp alleyway outside. The tenements rose up on either side of her, forming a dank canyon, illuminated only by a narrow strip of dusky sky.