We were sitting in the kitchen, finishing off breakfast. I’d wolfed mine down in very few bites. Back home, I’d thought we were poor, but at least we had thicker slices of bread. You could feed a sparrow on what we ate at Metyard’s. The sparrow might turn his nose up, though.
I’d just emptied my mug and placed it on the table when there came a smart rat-a-tat-tat. Nell jerked to attention. ‘That’s the tradesman’s door,’ she said.
Mim’s eyebrows bunched together in dismay.
‘Hurry up, Miriam,’ Ivy sang. ‘You wouldn’t want to be neglecting your duties.’
‘I’ll go,’ I said.
I dived off the bench before anyone could stop me.
The tile floor was still damp. I picked my way over it, careful not to slip. It felt like ten years ago I’d shuffled into this room with Ma and wrinkled my nose at the smell.
This person at the door, waiting for me … It couldn’t be Ma again, could it? Come back to say she’d made a terrible mistake?
Praying with all my might, I opened up the door.
It was Billy Rooker.
I expect you’ve read about him in the paper. Maybe you’ve even seen a woodcut. I can’t say he was handsome, exactly, but he had a rugged charm. Rumpled hair, ill-concealed beneath his cap. Bright, blue eyes. Remarkable, the colour of them; they were the first thing you saw when you looked in his face. So very sharp. You could cut yourself on those eyes.
‘Hello.’ He offered a smile. It created a tiny dimple in his chin. ‘You’re new.’
‘I’m Ruth,’ I said, stupidly.
‘So you are. Billy Rooker.’
He put out his hand. I shook it. I remember how warm it felt, encasing my bloodless fingers.
‘Can you help me then, Ruth?’
‘I don’t know … What do you want?’
He laughed. Careless, breezy. How long it had been since I’d heard someone laugh like that. It felt like a miracle.
‘They haven’t told you about me, then? I’m your draper. Well, Rooker Senior is. I bring all your material.’
‘Oh. I wouldn’t know where to put it. Mrs Metyard and Miss Metyard are in the showroom, but I could—’
He gestured over my shoulder. ‘Sure, in that lumber room behind you will be grand. Come on.’
Jamming his hands into his coat pockets, he turned and walked across the yard towards the gate. Snatches of a melody floated to me on the summer breeze. He was whistling.
Leaving the house didn’t strike me as an advisable course of action – not with the threat of Kate’s poker. But the wrench I felt as Billy Rooker slipped from sight was strong enough to combat my good sense. To lose him would be like forfeiting the only gasp of fresh air I’d breathed in months. I had to follow.
The soil was dusty beneath my boots. I retraced the steps I’d taken with Ma two days ago, past the coal hole, through the battered gate. Billy stood at the side of the road next to a wagon. A sturdy piebald mare dozed between the shafts. She was tied to a hitching post.
‘Autumn colours,’ Billy told me. ‘Already. They don’t waste any time, your fine ladies.’
As he opened the back doors, I darted glances down the street, hoping against hope to see Ma. There were only milkmaids and bakers. Each time I thought of her out here, alone, another part of me withered. Already the world outside Metyard’s felt bigger and noisier than I recalled.
‘Here.’ Billy was standing hunched over inside the wagon, pushing out a long roll wrapped in canvas. ‘These are the bolts. You take that end, I’ll grab the other.’
The canvas scratched against my palms.
The bolt wasn’t heavy, really; more unwieldy. I could see why Billy would struggle to navigate it into Metyard’s by himself. Gallantly, he walked backwards, allowing me to see the steps and the gate. But to tell you the truth, I couldn’t turn my face up. It felt too intimate: staring down that roll of fabric at a young man. Like I was hot and too large for my body.
I’d never had a male friend, barely seen a boy my own age. And here, suddenly, was this dazzling person, in his early twenties, so friendly. New and alarming sensations rose up inside of me. My corset seemed too tight.
But if I was flustered, Billy didn’t notice. He kept chattering away to me. ‘You’ll like this one. Striking colour; chestnut, like a conker. Or a bit deeper. Like … Miss Kate’s hair.’
‘Nell has cinnamon hair,’ I replied without thinking. My cheeks burned. I could have bitten my tongue off.
But Billy seemed pleased. ‘Aye! So she does. I never thought of it like that. Cinnamon. And what about your hair? What will we call that?’
He laughed. ‘You’re all right, Ruth.’
We lumped about half a dozen bolts from the wagon and set them on the floor of the lumber room. My shoulders ached, but less than I’d expected. I already had more strength than I used to.
Billy and I stood together, catching our breath. His cap had slipped to a jaunty angle.
‘Come on.’ He produced a knife from his pocket. ‘Fancy a peek?’
With a practised motion, he squatted and cut the canvases away. Burnt orange, hunter green, russet and merlot. Then the chestnut, just like he said.
‘Look at that velvet! Trim it with sable fur and you’ll have yourself a spanking cape.’
I reached out a hand to touch. It was soft as skin. I yearned to lean down and place my cheek against the pile. Would that make a difference – if I caressed material instead of stabbing it? It might. But this gentle, voluptuous feeling was hard to keep alive. It sparked out so much quicker than hate.
‘I suppose you need to be paid,’ I said, forcing myself away from the velvet. ‘I don’t know how it works here. Should I fetch Mrs Metyard? She might not like me going in the showroom …’
‘No. Better get back to your sewing before the old dragon catches you.’ He winked. It caused an odd movement inside my throat. ‘I’ll be grand; Miss Kate will come and find me when she’s ready.’
Disappointed, I shuffled out of the lumber room. Billy returned the knife to his pocket and followed me. It made a nice change to be walking at the front, instead of behind Kate and the other girls. But when I turned, heading for the kitchen where no doubt Mim would still be struggling with the plates, Billy started to climb the hallowed carpeted stairs. Easy as you like, the most natural thing in the world! I paused, confounded, wondering if I should stop him. He was already gone.
My step was less steady as I entered the kitchen. Suppose I got into trouble for letting him inside? What if he stole something? If Mim could be beaten over a cracked plate, my situation was dire. I remembered that missing finger …
Mim was in the kitchen, as I’d thought, but so were the other girls. They lounged at the table while Mim washed up. We’d all be for it, if Kate found us dallying. But Nell looked relieved rather than guilty, her shoulders less hunched than usual. Even Ivy’s scowl was gone.
‘It’s him, isn’t it?’ she asked me. ‘Mr Rooker.’
‘Yes. Why?’
Ivy threw back her head and exhaled. ‘Thank goodness. That’s her in a good mood for the rest of the day.’
I stared at them. ‘Who? What are you talking about?’
Ivy waved her hand dismissively, as if she’d done with speaking to me.
Nell got up from the table. ‘Mr Rooker is Miss Kate’s fiancé. Didn’t he tell you that?’
Rosalind Oldacre’s boots: that was all I could liken it to, the swift drop in my chest. Of course Kate, with her tilted nose and tiny waist, had everything. That’s why he’d compared the velvet to her hair.
Whereas I was just a silly, mooning girl of thirteen.
‘He spoils her something rotten,’ Daisy said. ‘Lucky bitch. I wish someone would mix me drinks and buy me rings. Haven’t you seen it, the sapphire on her finger? Must have cost him a year’s wages. You could take someone’s eye out with that.’
Mim shivered, as if she knew only too well.
Sapphire was the stone for Kate. Another deep, fathomless blue. And Billy’s eyes would rival the stone with their brighter, lighter hues.
‘Well,’ said Nell, moving towards the cupboard. ‘If Mr Rooker is here, I’d better fetch the cocoa flakes.’
I never tasted cocoa. All I drank was the smell: sweet, seductive and a tiny bit peppery, wafting its way up from the rooms below. It was like a dream, like a sumptuous gown. You could feel the texture of it.
The girls said Billy Rooker mixed the best cup of cocoa in the land, even finer than the parlours in London. But how anyone knew that, I’m not sure, because he only ever made cocoa for Miss Kate.
When she returned to us that day, there was a brown smudge above her top lip. It looked erotic, almost obscene, as she went about smiling, humming to herself, unaware. Billy hadn’t noticed the mark, he hadn’t kissed it away. It seemed to me that was the sort of thing a fiancé should do.
There were no arguments, no beatings that afternoon. But I was mistaken if I thought the holiday spirit of Billy’s visit would last.
The next week, as I stumbled into the attic, barely awake, it struck me that something was off. A taint in the air. That was unusual. Kate kept the workroom in pristine condition to protect the material; there was no fireplace to produce smuts, and spreading dust was counted as bad as speaking a curse. Still, there was something. An odour.
Kate herself was downstairs, arranging the new bolts in the showroom window; otherwise, she might have noticed it. But I was too tired to give it more than a cursory thought.
I watched Nell open the drawers – she’d been entrusted with the key that morning – and picked out my needle and my spools. There were about three pieces of half-completed slop that I had to finish, within the hour, before we all started on bodices for the season’s ball gowns.
I’d left my work pinned and tucked in a wicker basket the night before, which I put in an empty cupboard at the back of the room. No one else left work unfinished overnight, but I’d presumed this was due to impatient customers and Miss Kate’s scolds.
I was wrong.
The basket felt heavier than I recalled. Weighted. I placed it on the work table, aware of the twins watching me. That wasn’t odd in itself – I think my plain face was a form of amusement to them. So I carried on, dwelling more upon the strange odour than on Ivy and Daisy, and submerged my hands beneath folds of cotton, ready to lift my work from the basket.
‘Ugh!’ I recoiled, holding my fingers up. Slime. Faintly yellow, salty and sour. ‘What …’
A quick gasp of breath. Daisy, smothering a laugh.
‘What have you done?’ Frantic, I tipped the basket over and rummaged through my half-sewn cotton petticoats. All of them were stained with the same phlegm-like substance. And there, sandwiched in the middle, two sets of bones. Fish bones from yesterday’s dinner.
They hadn’t been picked clean. Grey ribbons of skin snagged on the prongs; one of the creatures still had scales and eyes in its head. It gaped at me.
Anger filled me to the brim. I would have flown at her. Skidded across the table, torn the shears from their rope. But at that moment, Kate’s foot creaked on the floorboards.
‘What’s this?’ She looked just as she had that night with the poker: her features petrified.
I was a coward. I admit it. All the fire within me died under the cold intensity of her glare. ‘I …’
No laughter, now. Everyone focused on Kate’s quick eyes as they darted from the ruined petticoats to me and back again.
Surely she’d realise I hadn’t done it. Why would I do it? Mim and Nell knew the truth; they would say the words that were congested in my throat.
Wouldn’t they?
The silence began to ache.
When at last Kate spoke, her voice rang out like a gunshot. ‘Coal hole.’
I gawked at her.
‘Coal hole. Quickly.’
Before I could gather my wits, she’d crossed the room and twisted my arm behind my back. She pushed me, in front of her this time, from the room and down the stairs.
‘Three more petticoats to pay off. You’ll never leave here, Ruth.’
‘I didn’t—’ She trod on the hem of my gown, jolting me back.
I was stronger than her, heavier too. If she didn’t have my arm at such an angle, I might have broken free. But what then? Mrs Metyard’s leniency would end the minute I assaulted her daughter. To hit out would be to sign Ma’s warrant for debtors’ prison.
We reached the ground floor. Coal hole. What had Kate meant by that? For a delirious moment, I thought she was going to take me outside and cram me through the narrow chute in the garden. But she swung me round and pointed me towards the kitchen.
There was a hatch in the floor. I’d failed to notice it, devouring my precious meals at the table while Mim bustled back and forth. Now I saw its terrible wooden slats and the darkness gaping between. I thought I might prefer the chute, after all.
With her spare hand, Kate undid a bolt and prised the hatch open.
‘What—’
She pushed me, headlong.
I fell.
Pain sliced at my arms, my knees. I coughed. Bitter sulphur upon my tongue, powder on my chest. The hatch creaked again. My world turned black as pitch.
I couldn’t see. I could barely breathe. Panicked, I groped with my grazed hands, trying to find a way out.
There was no escape, only hard, vaguely round shapes. This was where the chute in the garden led to, where the coal was kept. Dirty, sooty clumps of rock. And me.
The roof was too low to stand. Instead I curled up on the damp floor. The darkness expanded to swallow me. I welcomed it. Maybe I’d suffocate down there, amongst the coal.