She was still staring at the newspaper as the soft autumn darkness descended. In the house around her, time was slowing down. She heard the familiar rattle of doors being bolted and the fire being stifled in the grate. Once upon a time, there would have come a tapping at the door and her mother would have peeped in to whisper her goodnights. Tonight, there was only the long silence. The lamp on the landing fizzled into blackness, and Cathy was left, still staring at the advert by the silvery light of the stars.
Sales and stocktaking – that sounded simple enough. No experience required – that seemed an invitation too good to be true. And, if she wondered why there was an advert for a store in London so far outside the city itself, her bewilderment did not last long. London, she thought. Yes, she could disappear in a place like that. People went missing in London all of the time.
THE GIRL IN THE TOYSHOP
LEIGH-ON-SEA TO LONDON, NOVEMBER 1906
Running away was not like it was in the stories. People did not try and stop you. They did not give chase. The thing people didn’t understand was that you had to decide what you were running away from. Most of the time it wasn’t mothers or fathers or monsters or villains; most of the time you were running away from that little voice inside your head, the one telling you to stay where you are, that everything will turn out all right.
That voice kept Cathy up almost all of the night. In the darkest hour she sat in the window, one hand cupped around her belly, the other holding the advert up to the starlight that cascaded through. ‘And what do you think we should do?’ she whispered. ‘It isn’t just me, little thing. It would be you running too.’
The answer came in a rush of feeling, of love and nausea and imaginary kicks.
Her mind made up, she was awake before dawn. She could hear the house coming to life, the fire being stoked in the grate. She watched from the window as her father set out into the dark. She watched, some time later, as Lizzy disappeared for school: just another ordinary day. Later still, her mother brought her toast, depositing it without a word. Even then there was that little voice in the back of her mind. Stay where you are, it was telling her. Everything will be all right.
But everything wouldn’t be all right. She knew it, with the same sinking inevitability that she knew she would not keep the toast down this morning. Even her stomach was mutinying against her.
There was so little to take with her: three clean dresses meant for school, socks from the drawer, the copy of Gulliver Lizzy had meant for her to have. The few pennies she had saved were meant for Christmas gifts, but she pocketed them all the same.
Goodbyes would be in short order today. She did not want to make one to her room – it would only lead to tears, and tears would only keep her here – so without looking back she went out on to the landing and hovered at the top of the stair. Down there, her mother was lost in a clattering of buckets and mops, pots and pans.
Cathy paused once at the bottom of the stairs. But it was not a second thought holding her here. It was only the realisation that this place where she had been raised, where she had squabbled and sobbed and sought comfort in her mother’s arms, wasn’t hers. It was already changed – so, without a moment of regret, she stepped out into the bracing November air.
After that, all she had to do was walk.
The station sat on the seafront, only a short walk along the estuary sands. If anyone looked at her on the way, they saw only simple, smiling Cathy Wray. They did not see the baby she brought with her. If they noticed the way she kept glancing over her shoulder, fearful of being followed by some fisherman friend of her father’s, they did not try to stop her. And when she finally stood on the platform, ticket in hand, she understood why: the world cared nothing for a single runaway daughter. It had seen the story so many times.
Alone, she boarded the train and watched the seafront sailing past. Cathy had ridden the train before, but never with this same sense of freedom. Was there a word for having done something wrong and yet so terribly right at the same time? If not, she would have to make one, a word for only her and her child. She pressed her face up against the window as the towns and rags of country flickered by. London was stealing up on her by degrees, the railway sidings and towns becoming a city only in those moments when she looked the other way. One moment she was passing through the shadows of Upminster, the next the platforms at Stepney East. By the time she stepped off the train, all the other passengers fanning out into the streets, she had quite forgotten the exhilaration of escape. It was a revelation to know that, after all the pious staring of the last six weeks, she was a nobody again.
She had been to London once before, but that had been in the Distant Past, and all she remembered of that trip was a café with chequered table cloths, sausages and chips and ice cream. A holy dinner, if ever there was one. Now, she found herself coming down the steps into a city she could not understand. A horse-drawn bus was sitting in front of the station, while the pavement heaved with office clerks. It was best to keep her head down, to barrel on, even though she had only the faintest idea in which direction to head. By instinct, she picked her way to the tramline and watched as one, two, three trams rolled past. When the fourth came she found courage enough to ask the driver if he knew where Iron Duke Mews might be. Somewhere up west, he said, and invited her aboard.
Soon, the driver summoned her up and set her back down. Regent Street was dizzying, and no place for a girl whose nausea was growing by the minute; all she could do now was hurry on, putting her trust in whatever lay at the other end.
Fortunately, Iron Duke Mews was not far away, though it took her some hours, weaving in her own wake, to find it. She had circumvented the overwhelming opulence of Claridge’s Hotel three times before she saw a regiment of children bullying their nursemaid along the row. Though the nursemaid looked harassed beyond measure, a smile was playing in the corner of her lips. Soon, Cathy began to see others – a father with his son tugging on his hand; a Kensington couple, carefully controlling the chaos as their three daughters cavorted around them – all heading in the same direction. But it wasn’t until she saw others returning that she knew she was right. A grandmother, dressed as if expecting a night at the opera, was leading her grandson out of the alley, and in his hands was a wooden sled harnessed to tiny woollen dogs. They seemed to scrabble in his palms while the sled floated on air behind.
Iron Duke Mews opened in front of her – and there, in the kaleidoscope of lights at its end, she saw Papa Jack’s Emporium for the very first time.
It was a double-fronted building, dominating the dead-end where the alley turned in on itself and forbade further passage; Papa Jack’s Emporium, it seemed, was a destination, not some place to be discovered by pedestrians idling by. The entrance was a gothic archway, around which heart-shaped leaves of the most fearsome red had been trained. On either side stood windows of frosted glass, obscuring the myriad colours within. The edifice of the building was speckled in lights, like snowflakes rendered in fire. Cathy had never seen electricity used like this, had not imagined it could be so giddy or enchanting. Smells were calling out to her too, gingerbreads and cinnamon that plucked her out of this November night and cast her down in a Christmas ten years ago.
She was still staring as a family emerged, trailing behind them a dirigible balloon. As long as a motorcar, it bobbed along at the height of their heads, while in the gondola below their two toddlers turned and gaped. One of them caught Cathy’s eye as he was borne past.
‘I’m going to have to talk to you, little thing,’ she whispered, with her hand on her belly. ‘If I don’t talk to somebody, I’m bound to go mad, and you’re the only one there is. So … what do you think?’