Poppy was swimming in the sea at Whitley Bay. Her brother was with her. The waves lifted them up and down, their legs kicking frantically under the water to keep them afloat. Their mother called to them from the shore: “Be careful! Don’t go too far out!” and their father waved to them, a peas-pudding and ham sandwich in hand. It was getting dark and a light swept over them in a wide arc: it was coming from St Mary’s lighthouse.
Suddenly her brother cried out and disappeared under the waves. Poppy waited for him to pop back up or to grab her ankle and pull her down, pretending he was a shark. She waited. And she waited. The light from St Mary’s was sweeping from left to right faster and faster. She looked to shore but could no longer see her parents. She thought she could still hear her mother’s voice, distantly calling: “Come back, Poppy; come back!” But she couldn’t leave without her brother. So she dived under the water to find him.
As her eyes adjusted to the murk, she saw him below her, face down, his arms and legs splayed like a tortoise in his red-and-white striped bathers. His blond hair was spread out like a halo. She dived down further and grabbed his collar and pulled him up. His body rotated until he faced her, his eyes and mouth wide and lifeless.
The light above her was getting brighter. She dragged her brother towards it but as she burst through the surface she lost her grip and he drifted away from her, back below the waves. She flipped herself over to dive again but then someone grabbed her shoulders and pulled her upwards. She fought, she screamed, then she stared into the face of Daniel, who was mouthing, “I love you!”
She calmed and sank into his arms, feeling the warmth of his embrace. Then she was being lifted onto the beach and laid out on the warm sand. Her body ached for him. She raised herself towards him and opened her mouth to receive his kiss – but it wasn’t Daniel; it was Toby.
A surge of guilt shot through her but her desire was too strong. She closed her eyes and gave herself to Toby’s lips, until she felt something running down her chin and onto her neck. She touched it and brought her fingers to her lips to taste. Blood.
Her mouth was filling, gagging; she pulled away from Toby, pushing with all her might. She threw her head back to scream, and blood gushed out like a water geyser. Children were playing around her, jumping in and out of the bloody fountain; and in their midst was Alfie Dorchester, like the Pied Piper, playing a tune on a champagne flute, a Victoria Cross hanging around his neck.
And the children became soldiers; and the soldiers became corpses with amputated legs; and each of them had the face of her brother.
Someone was filming it on a hand-wound camera and she was in a cinema, watching. In the seats next to her were young women, immigrant girls, while the Statue of Liberty walked across the screen, turned to the audience, and screamed.
“Poppy, Poppy, wake up! You’re having a dream.”
Poppy, her nightgown drenched in sweat, opened her eyes to see the pale, worried face of Delilah. She blinked a few times to test that she was really awake. She was. Her heart was still racing, the images of the old recurring dream of Whitley Bay still fresh in her mind, overlaid by new images that she could not quite grasp. She closed her eyes and scrunched up her face, trying to give them conscious form, but as sleep fell from her, so did the dream.
“I’m sorry – did I wake you? I was dreaming. It was Whitley Bay again, and…”
Delilah passed Poppy a glass of water and waited for her to drink. “I thought you’d stopped having that dream.”
Poppy sipped at the water, swilling it around her mouth and allowing it to trickle down her throat, erasing the taste of blood.
“It’s been awhile,” said Poppy and put the glass on the side table. She sat up, propping the pillows behind her. Delilah was fully dressed, her fur coat unbuttoned, revealing a silver and black sequined ensemble beneath.
“You just getting in?” asked Poppy, peering through the gloom to try to see the clock. It was one o’clock in the morning.
Delilah chuckled. “I am. I would have just gone to bed and seen you in the morning but I heard you crying in your sleep. Thought I’d come in and see if you were all right.” Delilah stared intently at her friend. “You are all right, aren’t you?”
Poppy reached over to the bedpost and unhooked her bed jacket. “I am, yes, thanks.”
Delilah shrugged out of her coat and laid it on the bed beside her.
“Listen, Poppy, I want to say sorry for what happened on Saturday. I should have come home with you. You were upset. I shouldn’t have let you leave on your own.”
Poppy smiled. “That’s all right; no harm done… to me, anyway.”
Delilah bit her lip. “Did you find out any more? About the girl? Toby told me he’d made some enquiries and couldn’t find her.”
Poppy pulled the cashmere bed jacket over her shoulders. “When did he tell you that? Because I spoke to him earlier today” – she looked at the clock – “earlier yesterday, and he said he would investigate further. He said he would ask Miles.”
Delilah’s brown eyes widened. “What could Miles possibly know about it?”
Poppy cleared her throat. She didn’t want to suggest Miles was involved in any way – not without evidence and certainly not while Delilah and he seemed to be starting out on a relationship – so she considered for a moment how best to phrase her answer. “It seems… it seems that Miles invited the girls there as companions for some of the other guests – the film producers.”
“The producers! Oh my! You mean they were there in a – a – professional capacity? The girls were prostitutes? The ones in the library?”
“It seems that way, yes.”
Delilah flicked her fringe away from her eyes and sighed. “It happens. Unfortunately. I wouldn’t have known, though, by looking at them. They were very well turned out.”
Poppy considered how well turned out Mimi had looked the next morning in the bathtub. “Yes, well, not everything is as it first appears.”
Delilah picked a bit of fluff off her fur coat and flicked it onto the floor. “We mustn’t judge though, Poppy. If that’s how those girls make a living, then that’s their business. In some parts of the world it’s perfectly legal.”
“It is,” Poppy agreed, “as long as they did genuinely choose to do it.”
Delilah’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? Do you have any proof that they weren’t there by choice? Did you speak to them? Did they tell you that?”
“Well, no,” Poppy admitted, “but the girl I found in the bathroom told me one of the men had hurt her.”
Delilah nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, you said.” Then she shook her head. “It makes me so mad! Did she say which one it was? I met the four of them the next day and they all seemed like perfect gentlemen.”
Poppy raised an eyebrow. “On their best behaviour, were they?”
“Oh yes,” said Delilah. “They were kind and patient, and not one of them suggested I do something… improper in front of the camera.”
“They had cameras?”
“Just one. Miles had it. They did some test shots of me. They all agreed I’d be perfect for the role.” Delilah’s face lit up, all thoughts of the bruised girl in the bathtub seemingly left behind. “So they’ve invited me to Hollywood for a proper screen test. Hollywood! Can you believe it?”
Poppy’s brows furrowed. “Which film company did you say they were from?”
“Black Horse Productions. Miles works for them too. His Uncle Theo is a major shareholder.”
“Oh?” said Poppy, her ears pricking at the mention of Senator Spencer’s name. “I didn’t know Theo was in the film business.”
“He’s not really. Not any more. Apparently he dipped his toe in five or six years ago. Bought the company. Turns out he didn’t have much of a talent for it, though. But that’s how Miles got his start. He went to California with Uncle Theo and had a go. Turns out he has got talent for it. You’ve seen Baby and the Bluebird, haven’t you?”
Poppy nodded. She and Daniel had seen it together at the Electric Cinema in Chelsea.
“Well, that was one of his! Amazing! I never realized when I first saw it. And now he’s asked me to try out for one of his films.”
Outside, in the New York sky, a cloud that had covered the moon shifted, and silver light filtered through the crack in Poppy’s bedroom curtains. It lit up Delilah’s face like a spotlight: her doe eyes, her rose-bud mouth, her long elegant neck, her sleek, black bobbed hair… oh yes, Delilah would be perfect for Hollywood.
But then a shadow fell across her visage. “But now you’re telling me Miles might be involved in hurting this girl.”
Poppy shook her head firmly. “Oh no! That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m just saying that he was the one who telephoned to ask for the girls to come. I’m sure he had nothing to do with what actually happened. So, I was hoping he could tell me who he telephoned so I can speak to them to find out if Mimi – that’s the girl I met – is all right. And if it turns out she is, and she did go there of her own free will, then that will be the end of it – assuming she doesn’t want to lay charges, of course. And from what I’ve heard about how prostitutes operate, she might very well not. But if she does…”
Delilah looked near to tears. Poppy took her hand. “Oh Delilah. I’m sure it won’t get Miles into trouble. He just made a phone call. He was probably asked to. Perhaps he didn’t think he had a choice – if they were his employers in the company.”
Delilah nodded vigorously. “They were. They are. So you – you don’t think Miles has done anything wrong, then?”
Poppy inhaled and then let out a long, slow breath. How was she to phrase this? “Well, I wouldn’t go that far. However… whilst I don’t think people should encourage that sort of thing, as you say, it does happen. It’s up to you whether you think Miles’s involvement is something you can condone. It’s not my business, Delilah.”
Delilah squeezed Poppy’s hand so tightly it was beginning to hurt. She had a strong grip for a slightly built woman. “Oh Poppy, I don’t know. If all he did was make a phone call… and as you say, he might not have felt he could say no… Tell me, what would you do if it was Daniel?”
Poppy felt her stomach churn at the mention of her former beau. A sudden flash of an image of the two of them on a beach came to mind. Was that her dream? She shook her head to bring her thoughts back to Delilah and the here and now. “Well, if it was Daniel – before we’d called it off, of course, because now it wouldn’t be any of my business – I think I would have confronted him and told him that that behaviour was totally unacceptable to me. Even if a girl hadn’t been hurt.” Poppy shook her head. “But it’s not Daniel, and it’s not me. This is a decision you have to make for yourself, Delilah.”
Delilah’s shoulders slumped. “I know. And I’ll have to decide soon. We’re leaving for California on Friday. I’ll have to speak to him about it before then. I don’t think I can go with him until we’ve had it out.”
Poppy patted Delilah’s knee with her spare hand. “I think that’s wise, Delilah, very wise.”