‘Make sure she gets her bleedin’ money back,’ Lily whispered in George’s ear as she hugged him goodbye.
George nodded, walked over to his MG and got into the driver’s seat.
Lily tottered from the front gate to where the car was parked. She looked about her and was glad to see the street was empty. It had just gone eight o’clock and was only starting to get light. Most of the other residents on West Lawn were elderly and rarely left their homes, so she could risk leaving the house in her dressing gown with her hair still in rollers. Not that she would have been too concerned had any of her neighbours seen her. They all believed her to be French and as a result she was relieved of the burden of being either ‘normal’ or ‘respectable’.
Bending down, she poked her head into the car. Charlotte was sitting scrunched up in the back seat. Rosie had made her wear her school uniform for the last time.
‘Do as your sister says, you hear?’ Lily commanded.
Charlotte nodded, her face a mix of excitement and apprehension.
Lily then turned her attention to Rosie, whose face was bare of make-up, save for a thin layer of foundation and a light brush of powder to cover her scars. She was a little taken aback to see that she was wearing her faded blue denim overalls, which were covered with a scattering of pinhole burns.
‘See you when you get back,’ Lily said simply, before stepping backwards. ‘No need to tell you to drive carefully,’ she said to George.
‘No need at all, my dear,’ he said, adjusting his rear-view mirror. He gave Lily a wink and a half-smile before pushing the gear stick into first and pulling away.
With both hands stuck in the pockets of her plaid night robe, Lily watched as the MG drove to the end of West Lawn.
Seeing Charlotte’s smiley face looking out the back window and waving at her, Lily waved back.
She couldn’t have wished for a better outcome had she actually planned it.
The journey to Harrogate passed quickly. The noise of the car engine made conversation practically impossible, which Rosie was glad of. She wanted to be totally focused on what she was about to do. Going up against someone as educated and as well-to-do as Mrs Willoughby-Smith was a little intimidating. She didn’t want to stumble over her words or make a fool of herself, plus she wanted to take the deputy head down a peg or two. If she could also leave with a cheque for the fees she had paid for the rest of the term, then all the better. She was damned if she was going to beg for it, though.
As they made their way down the A1, Rosie looked at the passing landscape and the patchwork of fields – so lush and green, so unlike the grey metal and concrete terrain she was used to. She looked down at her overalls and recalled her first day at Thompson’s. She’d been given a pair of men’s overalls that were far too big for her, but she had not dared to ask if there was a smaller pair. She’d just been so thankful to be taken on. She hadn’t realised at the time that it was thanks to Jack that she’d got the job. He had argued with management that they should give her a chance, despite her gender. He had tipped the scales in her favour by reminding them that they had recently taken on a girl of roughly Rosie’s age in the admin department – his own daughter. In doing so he had also subtly reminded them that he was the son-in-law of one of the town’s most influential and powerful businessmen, Mr Havelock. It was a card he rarely played and one he only allowed himself to use for the benefit of others.
Seeing the signs to Harrogate, Rosie felt a slight fluttering of nerves. She thought about yesterday evening when she had gone to see Gloria. She’d felt bad asking her to cover for her on her first day back at work, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything else until she’d done what she needed to do.
When she’d walked into Gloria’s flat, she’d been surprised to see Helen sitting on the sofa with Hope on her lap. She knew, of course, that Helen had become close to Gloria and Hope. But still, it was strange to see them together in such a domestic scenario.
They had both been aghast when she’d told them what Charlotte had told her, although Helen hadn’t seemed particularly shocked. Her words were, ‘Welcome to my world.’
‘One mile to go!’ George shouted above the noise of the engine. Charlotte and Rosie sat up straight in their seats.
Five minutes later they had turned off the main carriageway and were driving slowly along winding country roads and it wasn’t long before they were crunching down the gravel driveway of the Runcorn School for Girls.
As soon as George had reversed the car into the parking place allocated for visitors, he climbed out. Using his stick, he hurried round to the passenger side.
‘Thank you, George,’ Rosie said, stepping out of the car and looking around her. She saw the large clock on the front of the main school building. It was twenty-five-past ten. Her appointment was at half past. Their journey had been timed to perfection.
‘Right, Charlie,’ Rosie said as her sister clambered out of the back seat. ‘Get your bag out of the boot and get your stuff.’
Charlotte nodded, went to the car boot and hauled out her empty suitcase.
‘And remember what I said,’ Rosie said sternly. ‘I don’t want even a cross word – regardless of what anyone might say to you.’
Charlotte nodded again and headed off in the direction of her dormitory at the back of the school.
‘After you, my dear,’ George said.
Rosie took a deep breath and the pair walked up to the main entrance and into the expansive foyer. The deputy headmistress’s office was to the left and the school secretary’s office was on the right.
‘Oh, excuse me!’
Rosie saw the school secretary, whom she knew to be called Miss Howey, hurrying towards her. She had a cup of tea in her hand.
‘Tradesmen’s entrance. Around the back!’ the secretary ordered, using her free hand to shoo Rosie back out the front door. She made no effort to hide her disdain.
Rosie forced a smile onto her face.
‘Ah, good morning, Miss Howey,’ she said. ‘Lovely to see you again.’
She paused.
Seeing that the secretary still had no idea who she was, she informed her, ‘It’s Mrs Miller. Mrs Rosemary Miller. Charlotte Thornton’s sister.’ Rosie put her hand out to greet the secretary, whom she had met on her last visit.
Miss Howey looked at Rosie’s outstretched hand but made no effort to shake it. Instead her eyes flickered to George, who was standing behind Rosie, his walking stick in one hand, his fedora in the other.
‘Sorry, can I help you?’ she asked, throwing an irritated look in Rosie’s direction, but giving the smartly dressed gentleman a welcoming smile.
‘I’m with Mrs Miller,’ George said politely. Unlike Rosie, he did not offer his hand in greeting.
Rosie looked at George and then back to the school secretary.
She undid the top button of her overalls. Her temperature was rising.
‘Miss Howey,’ she said, ‘I think you’ll find I have an appointment with Mrs Willoughby-Smith at half-past ten.’
At that exact moment, the door to the deputy head’s office opened.
‘Mrs Miller—’ Mrs Willoughby-Smith stopped in her tracks. The look on her face changed in a split second from pleasantly professional to one of undisguised horror.
She nervously scanned the immediate vicinity, terrified that others might have seen a labourer standing on the polished parquet flooring in an area only teachers and parents were allowed to tread. Even the pupils had to use a side entrance.
‘Ah, Mrs Willoughby-Smith,’ Rosie said, this time dispensing with the niceties of a handshake. Instead she stretched out her arm and signalled towards the deputy head’s office door.
‘Shall we? I believe it’s almost half-past ten.’ Rosie pulled up the sleeve of her overalls to look at her watch. The only belonging she had left of her mother’s. ‘Of course, I can sit and wait if you’d prefer.’
Rosie looked over Miss Howey’s head as though she had just spotted someone she knew. She raised her hand in a wave.
‘Oh, is that Charlotte’s Latin teacher?’
She looked at Mrs Willoughby-Smith and then to Miss Howey.
‘Gosh, I always forget her name.’
‘Please come into my office!’ The deputy head moved aside and pushed the door wide open.
‘Are you all right to wait?’ Rosie turned to look at George.
George nodded and sat down on a hard wooden chair in the foyer.
Having ushered Rosie into the confines of her office and quickly shut the door, Mrs Willoughby-Smith’s demeanour changed.
‘I have to say, Mrs Miller, that this is most improper of you.’
She pulled her chair closer to her desk and put her hands palms down on the embossed leather top.
‘And I really must point out that if you come here again dressed like some lowly labourer fresh from the factory, we will not be able to allow you over the threshold. If any of my girls were to see you wearing such attire, what kind of example would that be setting?’
If there had been a shred of doubt in Rosie’s mind that she was doing the right thing, Mrs Willoughby-Smith’s last comment successfully obliterated it.
Rosie bit her tongue and pointed to the chair in front of the desk.
‘May I?’
Before Mrs Willoughby-Smith had a chance to object, Rosie sat down, pulling up the trousers of her overalls as she did so and crossing her legs. She put her clasped hands on her lap.
‘First of all, Mrs Willoughby-Smith, you need have no worries about me turning up here ever again, let alone dressed in what you refer to as “such attire”.’ Rosie smiled pleasantly.
Mrs Willoughby-Smith looked at Rosie and furrowed her brow.
‘As of today,’ Rosie explained, ‘I am withdrawing Charlotte from this school.’
‘I’m guessing,’ Mrs Willoughby-Smith said, her eyes focused on Rosie’s overalls, ‘that the reason for you doing so is because you can no longer afford to dress yourself properly, never mind pay the fees to keep your sister here?’
Rosie glared at the deputy head.
‘Far from it!’ she retorted. ‘In fact, Charlotte will be starting at another independent school – a school, I hasten to add, that runs its affairs with a far higher level of professionalism than Runcorn does.’
‘Oh,’ Mrs Willoughby-Smith said, sitting back in her chair. ‘And which school might that be?’
Rosie looked at the deputy head.
‘That’s none of your business,’ she said simply. ‘What is your business, though,’ she continued, ‘and which I feel you have a right to know, is the reason why I have decided to remove my sister from the school.’
‘Pray tell, Mrs Miller. I’m all ears.’
Rosie looked at the woman sitting in front of her and realised that nothing she said would make any difference, but she didn’t care, she was going to say it anyway.
‘When I was here last and we were discussing the possible reasons why Charlotte and the other girl in her year had ended up fighting, you knew all along what was really going on, didn’t you?’
Mrs Willoughby-Smith didn’t answer.
‘You knew that Charlotte’s classmates had found out that I was a shipyard welder and that she was being relentlessly bullied, didn’t you?’
Again silence.
‘You also knew that Charlotte had, in fact, endured a rather long and consistent campaign of bullying since first coming here due to the fact that she has neither a mother nor a father.’
Rosie paused.
‘I only wish she had felt able to tell me about it at the time, but – and it hurts me to say this – in her words, she “just got used to it” and decided, for whatever reasons, not to tell me.’
Rosie looked at the deputy head’s face, which was impassive.
‘But then the bullying escalated,’ Rosie said, trying her hardest to keep her anger at bay. ‘The little gang of girls – who are, from what I can gather, known bullies – got their hands on a letter I sent Charlotte which made reference to my job and one of the ships I was working on. This had the effect of adding fuel to what had become, at that point, a dwindling fire.’
‘Perhaps,’ Mrs Willoughby-Smith interrupted, ‘Charlotte should have been more careful with her personal possessions and not left them lying around for others to read.’
Rosie felt her face flush.
‘The girls in question didn’t find the letter by chance, or through any carelessness on Charlotte’s part. They snatched it out of the hands of her best friend – a young girl called Marjorie – after Charlotte gave it to her to read.’ Rosie took a deep breath. ‘The bullies then proceeded to read it out to the whole dormitory whilst – again in Charlotte’s words – “laughing like hyenas”.’
Rosie glowered at the deputy head.
‘The whole episode ended up in a fight, with Charlotte trying to reclaim her letter, and worse still, with Marjorie suffering an asthma attack. Thank goodness the poor girl’s no longer a pupil here.’
‘I’m afraid,’ Mrs Willoughby-Smith said, a condescending smile stretched across her face, ‘bullying is simply a part of life – be that at school or outside in the real world. The girls have to learn to deal with it. It’s part of growing up. They just have to toughen up.’
Rosie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It took her a moment to unjumble the myriad of arguments fighting to break free to show just how wrong this was.
‘Just because it’s a part of life does not mean it’s right, or that we should condone it by doing nothing!’ Rosie couldn’t stop the mix of anger and exasperation from breaking through.
‘Mmm,’ Mrs Willoughby-Smith mused. ‘I suppose we are all entitled to our own opinions, but I have to say, Mrs Miller, that had you not lied about what you did for a living, in all likelihood none of this would ever have occurred. So, if the blame has to be placed on anyone’s doorstep, I’m afraid it would be yours.’
Rosie looked at the deputy head sitting in her oak-carved chair, her hair swept back in a neat roll, make-up perfectly applied and a picture of the King on the wall behind her, and realised that she would never make this self-righteous woman see sense.
Rosie sighed.
‘You’re right, Mrs Willoughby-Smith, on one point, and that is I should have been honest from the start. I wish I had been. I really do. I should have been proud of my job and had the courage to stick my neck out and face the ridicule for doing a job those with closed minds think is for men alone. But I didn’t, and my little sister has had to suffer the consequences of my lack of courage.’
Rosie took a breath. She could feel her heart pounding.
‘However, what infuriated me perhaps even more than your inability to deal with the bullying and intimidation taking place,’ she continued, ‘was when Charlotte told me that she’d heard you laughing and snickering about the fact that I work as a welder in a shipyard.’
‘Really?’ Mrs Willoughby-Smith asked. The epitome of innocence.
‘Yes, really,’ Rosie said. ‘You might recall asking to see Charlotte after my last visit, when I was summoned to come and talk about the problems you were having.’
‘Yes, I spoke to both girls after our meeting that day,’ Mrs Willoughby-Smith said. ‘Gave them both a good dressing-down.’
Rosie straightened her back and leant forward in her seat.
‘You’ll recall, then, that you also had a meeting with the other girl’s father. I believe his name is Mr Malcolm Whitehead?’
Mrs Willoughby-Smith started to move around uncomfortably in her chair.
‘I did,’ she said.
‘And that you and Mr Whitehead had a good old chuckle over the fact that I am a shipyard welder and not a secretary, as I had purported to be. You were also keen that Mr Whitehead understand that he was to have no concerns about his daughter receiving any kind of disciplinary measures.’
Rosie breathed out.
‘How do you think that made Charlotte feel?’ she said. ‘Sitting there, outside your office, hearing the person she was meant to respect and look up to bad-mouthing the only living relative she has? Knowing that the bully was going to get off scot-free?’
The two women sat, both silent, staring at one another.
‘So,’ Rosie said, standing up, ‘as Charlotte will not be spending another minute under this roof, I will expect to be refunded the fees I have already paid.’
Mrs Willoughby-Smith let out a bitter laugh.
‘You have a good sense of humour, Mrs Miller, I will give you that.’
Mrs Willoughby-Smith stood up, moved around the desk and walked over to the door to open it.
Rosie knew this was one battle she would not win. If the school refused to give her back the fees, there was nothing she could do about it.
‘And …’ Mrs Willoughby-Smith moved towards Rosie and spoke quietly ‘ … I wouldn’t be repeating anything we have discussed in this room to anyone. It wouldn’t be wise. I’m sure you’ve heard about the laws regarding defamation? After all, who is going to believe a fourteen-year-old girl who’s got a reputation for bare-knuckle fighting and has no parents to speak of, and her sister who works as a welder in a shipyard?’
The deputy head wisely took a step back and looked out into the hallway.
Seeing George push himself out of his chair with his walking stick, and her secretary’s concerned expression, she forced a convincing smile across her face.
‘So, good day, Mrs Miller,’ she said, turning to Rosie, her voice saccharine sweet. ‘I’m so glad we managed to sort everything out.’
And with that, Rosie found herself being ushered into the foyer, the office door closing firmly behind her.
Following the deputy head’s lead, Miss Howey also got up and shut the heavy oak door to her office.
George looked at Rosie.
‘Home?’
Rosie nodded, her face like thunder.
As they made it down the stone steps, George asked, ‘How did it go?’
‘Not quite how I had expected,’ Rosie said.
‘Did you say what you came here to say?’ he asked as they reached the car. He looked about but could not see any sign of Charlotte.
‘Yes.’ Rosie paused. ‘Yes, I guess I did.’
‘Well,’ George said, ‘that’s the main thing.’
He walked over to the passenger door and opened it wide.
‘And did she agree to pay back the fees?’ he asked as Rosie stood with her hand on the open door.
Rosie let out a bark of laughter.
‘I think her words were “you have a good sense of humour, Mrs Miller”.’
George looked at Rosie.
‘Damn it!’ he suddenly said, putting his hand to his head. ‘I’ve left my hat in the lobby.’
He turned to head back to the school.
‘I’ll be back in a jiffy.’
Rosie was standing by the car, breathing in the fresh air, calming herself down and going over the exchange of words she’d just had with the deputy head. She hadn’t really managed to take her down a peg, but did it really matter? She knew Peter would be proud of her and that provided her with some solace.
She also knew that Peter would be glad that Charlotte was coming to live at home. He’d always been a good listener while she’d regurgitated all the reasons Charlie couldn’t possibly come back. His lack of words, though, had spoken volumes. She knew that he believed a family should be together. Regardless.
Seeing Charlotte appear from the side entrance of the main building carrying her suitcase, Rosie had to admit that, deep down, she too had always felt the same.
‘You got everything?’ Rosie asked.
‘Yes,’ Charlotte said, heaving the case.
‘Here, let me give you a hand,’ Rosie said.
‘No, honestly, I can manage,’ Charlotte insisted, shoving the case into the boot of the MG.
Charlotte was just getting into the back seat when she saw George making his way towards the car.
‘Where’s George been?’ she asked Rosie.
‘He forgot his hat.’
‘Tally-ho!’ George said as he reached the car, lifting his fedora in the air. ‘Off we go! Home sweet home, and all that!’
He eased himself into the driver’s seat and shut the door.
Rosie followed suit.
‘Everything all right?’ Rosie asked, thinking George looked unusually chipper.
‘Couldn’t be better, my dear,’ he said, allowing himself a little rev of the engine before they set off.