Rosalind’s corset marked me: an ulcerous finger, headaches, yellow fingernails. Even the whorls on my skin became patterns of green. Yet with Kate’s corset, there was no trace. My palms, which ought to have been bathed red, showed clean. A little calloused, perhaps.
I left it in the showroom, set out in an open box. How exquisitely it nestled against pale cornflower satin. A touch of gold thread in the eyes of the peacock feathers. When you moved past them, they winked.
With a hand more accustomed to holding a needle than a pen, I wrote awkwardly on a card: To the future Mrs Rooker. That was all.
Mrs Metyard decreed that we would all attend the wedding; not out of any spirit of generosity, but rather for the sake of appearances.
‘I’m not going,’ I told the girls. ‘I don’t care what she does to me.’
Nell’s russet brows drew together. ‘I’d rather not go. But we have to, Ruth. We don’t have a choice. Don’t give Mrs Metyard an excuse to hurt you.’
Ivy derided us, called us simpletons for not wanting a day off work.
‘I wish I had the courage,’ said Daisy, ‘to stick my foot out and trip her up as she goes down the aisle.’
We woke a little later, on the bridal day. The sun didn’t smile upon Kate and Billy. Veils of rain obscured the sky and the wind moved, restless.
Besides unlocking the door to our bedchamber, the Metyards paid scant attention to us that morning. The girls washed unsupervised and fetched their own clothes. Or at least, that’s what Nell said. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.
I remained on my pallet, eyes open, staring blankly at the wall. After so much rage and pain, I couldn’t feel anything at all. I couldn’t summon the courage to climb to my feet, or even dread the consequences of staying put. Everything vital inside me had passed into the corset.
I never saw Kate in her wedding outfit. I didn’t behold that figure I’d pictured, all those years ago, sewing the Lindsay gloves. But at the end of the day, I’m not sure Kate would have matched the pretty bride in my imagination. Over the recent weeks her skin had been a shade too grey, her cheeks pinched with stress. The petite waist looked unpleasantly sharp. Her eyes, which used to sparkle, began to glitter with something fierce.
‘Where’s the Butterham girl?’ Mrs Metyard cried at last.
She’d barely finished her sentence before Ivy piped up. ‘She’s still slug-a-bed!’
Pounding footsteps on the floor above me. It would come at any time now: the fear. Wouldn’t it? I heard Mrs Metyard draw nearer and nearer, heard her bawling my name. Still I felt nothing. I was somewhere safe, outside of my body, looking on.
‘Get out of bed this instant! Don’t make me come down there and—’
‘Mother, Mother!’ Kate’s voice pleaded. ‘There isn’t time!’
‘Does she think she can disobey me? I ought to—’
A rap on the showroom door cut her off. Just in time. Her tones had been sliding south, deeper, into the captain’s territory.
‘The Rookers are here,’ Nell called.
A pause. They must’ve been at the cellar door, staring down the stairs at me, mother and daughter together. I didn’t turn to look at them.
Instead, my imagination painted Billy on the steps outside the shop. Waiting for his bride. I’d thought he was my friend, but he hadn’t been here when I needed him most. He’d chosen his side. He was part of Kate, now. And no one would ever rescue Mim from the trapdoor and the piles of coal.
‘Make haste, Mother. Leave her.’
‘What if she runs off? Or,’ in a whisper, ‘what if she goes for the police?’
Under the covers, my leg twitched.
‘Every window is bolted. She won’t get out. Hurry! It’s my wedding, Mother!’
Mrs Metyard grumbled.
The door slammed.
And I knew, at last, what I must do.
Mrs Metyard hadn’t locked the cellar. I would be able to get all the way into the showroom. To the front door.
Could I pick the lock? I’d managed with a needle on the cellar door, but that was a small, rickety sort of thing. I’d need a bigger tool, like a stiletto or a thin knife. Like my corset-making tools.
Once I was out, I could tell the bluebottles everything. Direct them to Mim’s body, ensure it was buried properly. They’d clap Mrs Metyard in irons before she even had the chance to whistle at my mother.
Dare I?
Shakily, I pulled myself out of bed and began to dress. My old corset, the child of my creation, was too small for a girl of fifteen, but I couldn’t leave it behind. I used it to wrap up a crust of bread and the remains of Mim’s bone fish and carried it in a bundle.
Madness. Surely it was madness to take such a risk, and yet I saw myself do it: saw myself walk, trembling, to the curtained alcove and retrieve my grimy tools. Mim’s blood still crusted the occasional blade; Mim’s blood would help me. If this worked, both of us would escape.
I trembled back into the showroom, my pulse beating so fast that it made my head ache.
And then I saw it.
Kate had taken the corset from its box. Somewhere deep inside, my black heart crowed.
I’d never been allowed to enter the house through the showroom door, but I intended to leave by it. Selecting a long, thin knife, I inserted the tip into the lock. This was a superior mechanism, made to secure an outer door from housebreakers, not the rusty old lock on the cellar. The metal made a grinding sound. I couldn’t tell if I was making progress.
My hands were slick. The handle twisted, twisted …
I dropped the knife.
Only luck made it miss my foot. Stuck upright by the tip, the blade trembled, flashing against the carpet.
I selected a stiletto this time, the tool I used to punch the eyelets in my corsets, and tried again. Sweat was pouring off me. Too far to turn back. If Mrs Metyard came home and found the lock scraped like this, she’d know what I’d been about …
The door opened a crack. Cold air rushed in and touched my cheek. There was the street, windblown and empty, waiting for me. So much bigger than I remembered it.
My breath came ragged and raw. Even after all that had passed, I was afraid to leave.
But I had to. Ma was out there.
The doorbell jangled, celebrating my liberty as I stepped over the threshold. The rain fell, fine and diagonal, hazing the streets. Carts rumbled along, passing a few brave pedestrians. God grant that Mr Brown the milkman didn’t stop by and catch me.
I began to walk, shivering, unsure of where to go. It was hard to move like a regular person, an innocent girl about her business. Every closing door in the street, every whinny from a horse, made me jump.
I was heading in the opposite direction from church, on streets I’d never traversed before. Away from the river and my old home in Ford Street, away from school. In all my years living in Oakgate, I’d never known where the police station was. I’d just have to keep searching, keep going until my feet bled.
After roughly a mile, the pavement ended abruptly at a crossroads. The sweeper boys hadn’t been out. If I wanted to pass to the other side, I would need to wade through mud and dung. So be it.
I stepped down and let my shoes sink into the sludge. I was lost, cold and beginning to grow numb. All the same it was glorious. These were free steps I took towards the other side; this was free moisture blessing my upturned face. Even the sound of horseshoes, ringing against the cobbles, was a kind of music.
A discordant music, out of key.
A whinny.
Snapping my head back, I looked down the street and saw a hansom barrelling towards me.
Sweat foamed on the horses. Clods of mud flew as they approached. I jumped out of the road, blessing my lucky stars that I’d seen the cab coming before it flattened me.
I was still blessing them when the whip cracked.
Pain. Red hot, across my face. I stumbled, fell. Dropped the corset.
Dimly, I heard the wheels skid to a halt. Hooves flailed, doors opened. A voice.
‘That’s her! That’s the girl, damn her!’
Rough hands pulled me to my feet. Through the mist of my own blood, a face floated to the surface.
‘We were just in time,’ gloated Mrs Metyard. ‘The ungrateful wretch was trying to run.’