Limehouse, 1958
Dad got rid of the aborted baby. He brought up newspapers and wrapped the thing up and took it away. Then he came back with clean linen and a bowl of hot water, flannel and towels, and left Dolly to make the bed and clean herself up.
Still in pain, she slept after that; no one came near. She slept all through that day and into the next, and when she woke at last the pain was gone, the enema had finished scraping out her insides and she had nearly stopped bleeding too.
It was over.
Dolly felt huge relief at that, along with massive guilt. She thought of the stained-glass angels in the church windows again, but her mind shied away. She ought not to be thinking of those angels, not her, she was wicked, bad to the bone.
But . . . was it really over?
The baby was gone, but where did that leave her?
Dad had looked as sickened as she did when the baby came away, she knew he’d seen himself, his own features, in the poor kid’s face. Well, good. He ought to suffer. Christ knew, she had suffered enough and none of it was her fault. Or . . . was it? Was it something she had done, trying to make herself look pretty maybe, had that somehow forced him to do the man-and-woman thing with her? Was it her fault, really? Had her wickedness infected him, made him do those bad things?
And there was something even worse loitering at the back of her mind. Once she was up and about and well again, would he pick up where he’d left off, start all that again, maybe even – and now she sat up in the bed, horrified – would he make her have another child, take another trip to the Aldgate woman? Would she have to endure another day and night of agony, only to deliver another dead horror?
It could happen. Dolly thought it really could. This awfulness could happen again and again until she went like Mum, totally off her head. And she couldn’t allow that. She wouldn’t.
Dolly’s mind was spinning in small trapped circles. Terrified though the idea made her feel, she knew she had to do it. It was the simplest of plans, really. And she didn’t have a choice in the matter, not any more.
She gave it a couple of weeks, enough to get her strength back, to return to her usual robust state of health. All the while, she was careful to tell Dad how rough she felt, that her insides hurt, just in case he should think of resuming the stuff he liked to do with her upstairs. She told him about the washing powder in the bowl and the enema, and could almost have laughed to see how it turned his stomach. He was revolted by female stuff, the mess and gunk that came with periods and babies and the results of him having his fun.
Then, late one night when Sarah was fast asleep and the whole household too, Dolly dressed, picked up the bag she had already packed, and left home. She was nearly fourteen.