Dead to Me

  Ruby chuckled. ‘Folks is always surprised by that! They say some of the best food in London is served round ’ere. I wouldn’t know that for certain, seeing as I ain’t got two farthings to rub together, but they say there’s good music in the nightclubs an’ all.’

  ‘Gosh!’ Verity said, feeling like she knew nothing about anything. ‘I’ve learned so much today.’

  ‘Time you taught me sommat, then,’ Ruby laughed. ‘’Ow’s about you take me in a caff and teach me ’ow to eat like a lady? It don’t ’ave to be a fancy place, I don’t want to show you up.’

  Verity chose a place that was marginally smarter than a working man’s cafe. It had red and white checked tablecloths and a menu with standard dishes.

  Ruby picked up the menu almost as soon as they’d sat down at a corner table. Verity noticed she was running a finger along the words and her lips were moving as though she was trying to sound them out.

  ‘The light is awful here. Shall I tell you what the choices are?’ she offered, wanting to spare her friend the indignity of admitting she couldn’t read very well. ‘There’s sausage and mash, liver and bacon, steak and kidney pie, shepherd’s pie.’

  ‘Shepherd’s pie,’ Ruby exclaimed. ‘I love that.’

  Verity smiled. ‘First thing,’ she began, ‘keep your voice low, we don’t want everyone in here looking round at us. I’ll order for us.’

  Verity duly ordered shepherd’s pie for both of them, and a glass of water each.

  ‘I likes tea,’ Ruby said, once the waitress had gone. She had looked very hard at Ruby as if tempted to ask her to leave.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you do, but it’s more correct to have tea or coffee after the meal,’ Verity said quietly. ‘Now when the food arrives, don’t attack it like you haven’t eaten for a month. And hold your knife and fork correctly, like this.’ She picked hers up to give a demonstration. ‘You mustn’t turn your fork up the other way to shovel the food in; you push it on to the back of your fork with the knife.’

  She wanted to laugh at Ruby’s baffled expression. She guessed that Ruby would normally use a spoon, unless the meal required a knife to cut it up. ‘Just do what I do,’ she suggested. ‘Now put your napkin on your lap in readiness.’

  Ruby did very well with her meal; she struggled a bit with the knife and fork, and had to be reminded not to chew with her mouth open, but she didn’t bolt it down or use her fingers. In no time at all her plate was clean. ‘Put your knife and fork together neatly,’ Verity instructed. ‘Even if you can’t eat it all, that’s a signal to the waiter that you’ve finished.’

  ‘What a palaver!’ Ruby said. ‘But it were lovely.’

  ‘Was lovely,’ Verity corrected her. ‘But we’ll save speech correction for another day.’

  They had treacle tart and custard, and a cup of tea to follow. Verity had to stop Ruby when she was just going to pour some tea into the saucer with the intention of cooling it down and pouring it back into her cup.

  ‘That is not done,’ she said firmly. ‘Just wait until it’s cooler.’

  But once outside the cafe, Verity praised her friend. ‘You did very well, you learn quickly. But I’d better go home now, or I’ll be in big trouble.’

  ‘I ain’t never ’ad a pal like you afore,’ Ruby said, looking a little embarrassed.

  ‘Nor me,’ Verity replied, and she felt a prickling of tears at the back of her eyes. ‘But I don’t know when I can see you again; once my father comes home it can be difficult to get out.’

  Ruby frowned. ‘I’ll come to ’Ampstead tomorrow about ’alf two. If you can’t get there then, send a note to me at the Red Lion at Camden Town. I wash up glasses there most nights, and they’ll give it to me. But if you want to meet, make it a couple of days ahead cos I might not get the note straight off.’

  Ruby led Verity to the bus stop to get her to Swiss Cottage.

  As the bus drew up Verity pressed a shilling into Ruby’s hand. ‘For your fare home,’ she said. ‘And thank you for a wonderful day.’

  Verity went upstairs on the bus and looked back at Ruby. She was just standing in the middle of the pavement, seemingly unaware of the people going past on either side of her. She looked terribly sad and alone. It occurred to Verity that she felt the same. She wasn’t alone, of course; she had family, an aunt and good neighbours. If she compared her life with Ruby’s, she lived in paradise.

  Yet it didn’t feel that way.

  She was so very lonely.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘So you got away?’ Ruby said when Verity met her the following afternoon and they began to walk up to the heath.

  ‘Yes, but something a bit strange is going on at home. Mother didn’t even ask why I’d been so long at the library yesterday, or why I didn’t come back for lunch. It was like she wasn’t even aware of me.’

  ‘Sure she wasn’t drinking? That’s how my ma is all the time.’

  Verity smiled. ‘No, she doesn’t ever drink more than a couple of sherries, and then only just before dinner. I think she must have got some upsetting news while I was out. She told me to have my lunch with Miss Parsons in the kitchen and she went to her room. I asked Miss Parsons if she was ill, but she said Mother had things on her mind. What can that mean?’

  ‘I dunno, maybe it’s sommat to do with your father?’

  ‘What, though? He’s found another lady? He’s dropped dead? What?’

  Ruby shrugged. ‘Would you like it to be one of those?’

  Verity immediately felt ashamed of herself. ‘No, of course not. But the only thing which would make her act like this is if there was something wrong with him.’

  They didn’t speak again until they were up on the heath and had sat down on a bench by Whitestone Pond.

  ‘You don’t like your pa, do you?’ Ruby said suddenly.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  Ruby shrugged. ‘I dunno exactly. Just a feeling.’

  Verity didn’t respond. She very much wanted to admit how horrible her father could be, the way he belittled her, scoffed at anything she said, and shouted at her for nothing. But most of all she wanted to talk about what had happened at Christmas. She felt Ruby would offer some advice about it. But she couldn’t bring herself to, and so she just sat in silence watching some small boys sailing a boat on the pond.

  ‘I’ve got to do something near ’ere,’ Ruby said after a few minutes. ‘You can stay ’ere and wait for me, I won’t be long.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Best you know nuffin,’ Ruby said, getting to her feet. ‘If I’m running when I come back, pretend you don’t know me. Just walk on down Heath Street and if I can, I’ll join you.’

  She walked swiftly away before Verity could ask her anything else, and disappeared behind Queen Mary’s Maternity Home.

  Verity remembered that when they first met, Ruby had said she came up to Hampstead to steal food and milk left on doorsteps, so maybe that was what she was doing. Yet by three in the afternoon surely anything left earlier would have been taken in? But she had to be planning to do something bad or she wouldn’t anticipate being chased.

  Verity waited, and waited. Half an hour passed, then another, and she was just getting to her feet to go home when Ruby came haring round the corner with a tall, dark man in hot pursuit. Verity could see that he was gaining on her friend and at any moment he was going to grab her. Despite having been told to go if Ruby was being chased, Verity couldn’t. Instead she walked towards them, with a vague idea forming of somehow getting in between them.

  Ruby made a little ‘get away’ gesture with her hands, but Verity took no notice and walked right into her friend’s path. She didn’t dare call out for fear of alerting the man to the fact that she knew Ruby, but she hoped her friend would guess what she was trying to do.

  She was less than five yards from Ruby, and the man was stretching out to catch her shoulders when Verity made her move. She stepped sideways to let Ruby pass, then quickly regained her old pat
h so that the man would bump into her.

  Verity wasn’t able to see if her ruse had been a success because the force of the man’s body crashing into her knocked her over. As she fell she must have clutched at him, because he fell too.

  ‘I’m so sorry, sir,’ she said breathlessly, still on the floor and not daring to look round to see if Ruby had got away. ‘I didn’t see you.’

  The tall man disengaged himself from her, got to his feet and glowered down at her. ‘I know perfectly well you are in it together,’ he panted out. Glancing over his shoulder at some people watching, he yelled for someone to get the police.

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ she said with all the indignation she could muster. She sat up and dusted off her clothes. ‘In what together? I have no idea what you are blaming me for. All I did was avoid that girl who was running down here, and somehow I banged into you. I couldn’t help it. And you’ve hurt me, I’m not sure I can even get up.’

  She could hear a murmur from the bystanders, which she hoped was sympathy, but to her dismay she saw a policeman coming. Her heart began to hammer with fright but she forced herself to get up slowly, making a big display of being hurt.

  The police officer was just a few yards away now, and the dark man made a gesture for him to grab Verity. ‘She is in league with the girl who stole a valuable carriage clock from my house,’ he bellowed for the whole world to hear. ‘Officer, arrest her, please! And send some of your men to catch her accomplice. She has red hair.’

  ‘That girl has already been caught,’ the policeman said. ‘She’s back there in Heath Street, held by the officer I was with. We saw her drop the clock, and I came on up here to see what people were looking at.’

  Before Verity could gather her wits the policeman had caught hold of her arm, and he said he was taking her to the police station.

  Verity was suddenly really scared. Everything had happened so quickly, and to find herself being led away by a policeman, as if she was a common criminal, was too shocking for words.

  As she was being taken into the police station she saw Ruby fleetingly, but Ruby didn’t acknowledge her in any way, not a smile, nod or wink. Verity felt that was her way of trying to make out they didn’t know one another so the police didn’t think they were in it together.

  The only thing she was asked was her name. Then she was put into a tiny box-like room, with just two chairs and a metal table. It smelled of cigarettes and stale sweat. The policeman left, and she heard him locking the door behind him. Then there was nothing. No one came in, she could hear nothing outside the door; it was as if she’d been forgotten.

  Fear engulfed her and she began to cry. All she had done was try to stop the tall man catching her friend. Surely that wasn’t a crime? Or was it?

  She had no idea what the time was, but it had to be after five o’clock by now. If she wasn’t home soon, Mother would be angry. What if the police went to her home?

  But they hadn’t asked her where she lived, only her name. She prayed silently that Ruby would tell the truth and say she acted alone, and perhaps make out she didn’t know Verity at all.

  Finally, just as she felt she’d go out of her mind in that room, the door opened and an older man in a dark suit came in. He was perhaps fifty, stout, with a narrow moustache and thin, greying hair. He introduced himself as Detective Inspector Charmers.

  ‘How old are you, Verity?’ he asked.

  ‘Thirteen, sir,’ she responded.

  ‘Old enough to know the difference between right and wrong?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘And this is wrong keeping me here all this time. I haven’t done anything, and my mother will be frantic.’

  ‘You may not have taken part in the actual robbery, but you are an accomplice.’

  ‘How can I be? I didn’t know that girl, I just walked into her.’

  ‘But you do know her,’ Charmers smirked. ‘We have a witness who saw you sitting together and talking on a bench at Whitestone Pond sometime earlier.’

  Verity knew she’d been caught out. If he hadn’t said where she’d been seen with Ruby, she might have thought it was a bluff. But to say the bench at the pond proved he really did have a witness.

  ‘You see?’ he grinned. ‘You can’t get out of that one, Miss Wood, you were spotted. And do you want to know why anyone would remember?’

  Verity shrugged.

  ‘Because you were total opposites. Our witness wondered what a well-dressed girl like you could be doing with such a guttersnipe.’

  ‘Yes, I was there, but I don’t know that girl. We just got into conversation,’ Verity lied. ‘I don’t know anything about her, we only talked for a few minutes and she said she had to go. Next thing I saw her running with that man after her. So I tried to help her! For all I knew he might have been trying to attack her. I didn’t know she’d done something bad.’

  Charmers looked at her long and hard, and she wilted under his stare.

  ‘You’ve been a silly goose,’ he said eventually. ‘I can guess why a nicely brought up girl like you would be curious about someone from a different way of life. But believe me, a girl like Ruby Taylor would only drag you down to her level. Now it’s time to take you home.’

  Verity’s stomach lurched. She knew there was no point in refusing to say where she lived. The police were clever, they would find out eventually, and it would only make her look more guilty. But she was so scared of what her parents were going to say. She couldn’t hope this would be brushed away.

  ‘Can’t I go home alone?’ she begged. ‘My mother will have fifty fits, and it’s cruel to upset her just over me talking to that girl.’

  Charmers reached out and took her arm, drawing her to her feet. ‘If I let this go, I would be failing your parents,’ he said. ‘They need to know what their daughter gets up to when she is away from home.’

  Another policeman drove Charmers and Verity to Daleham Gardens. She sensed Charmers had already spoken to her mother on the telephone, because the new man didn’t even ask her address. That would make it worse for her, as her mother would have had time to consider what Verity might have been up to.

  Miss Parsons opened the front door, her face as frosty as usual. ‘Mr and Mrs Wood will see you in the drawing room,’ she said curtly. So she clearly knew what was going on.

  Verity’s heart plummeted on hearing her father was home. But as she and Charmers walked into the drawing room she knew it was going to be even worse than she had feared.

  Archie Wood was a very intimidating man. He was tall – well over six foot – and well built. He rarely laughed, smiled or looked as if he had any interest in her at all. With dark, slicked-back hair, a swarthy complexion and a dark moustache which he oiled and tweaked out, she often thought he had the look of a Hollywood villain.

  Over meals he would speak to her, ask her about school and such things, but it always sounded to her as if it was just polite behaviour, not real interest. His eyes were very dark, and there never seemed to be any light or expression in them – the same as the dead fish on the marble slab at the fishmonger’s. He had never picked her up and cuddled her when she was little; she couldn’t remember ever sitting on his lap, or even being given a piggyback ride. That was what had made him coming into her bedroom at Christmas so alarming; he said he wanted to kiss her goodnight, but he’d never done such a thing before. As it turned out, it certainly wasn’t a kiss that he wanted. She couldn’t bear to dwell on what he had made her do to him.

  And now, as she saw his angry expression, she quaked. He looked like he despised her.

  ‘Just tell me, what could be the attraction of fraternizing with riff-raff?’ he asked.

  ‘I wasn’t fraternizing with her,’ Verity said. ‘She just said something about a boy sailing his boat on the pond and I replied. I didn’t know her, it was just a little chat with a girl who was about the same age as me. Was I supposed to ignore her, to get up and walk away like I’m too grand to speak to ordinary people?’

/>   His hand shot out and slapped her face hard. ‘Don’t take that attitude with me,’ he snarled. ‘I know you went out to meet her and that you have been with her before. Don’t lie to me.’

  Verity put her hand on her cheek; it was burning from his slap. And in that second, rage welled up inside her at the injustice.

  ‘I lie because you and Mother don’t allow me to go out and meet friends. I can never invite them here either. Shall I tell the policeman what you did to me at Christmas?’ The second that last angry retort had left her lips she regretted it, because she saw her mother’s eyes widen in alarm.

  Charmers looked curious.

  She didn’t want to tell anyone really, it was far too disgusting. But at the same time she wanted to hurt her father, as he had so often hurt her. She didn’t dare look at her father to see his reaction.

  ‘I think Verity understands now that it wasn’t wise to involve herself with a street urchin,’ Charmers said quickly. He sounded as if he was just trying to smooth things out so he could leave. ‘There is no evidence to support her being this girl’s accomplice. All Verity is guilty of is being a bit gullible and headstrong. I’m sure the time she spent at the police station will make her more careful about who she speaks to in future.’

  With that, he backed towards the door and left hastily without even a goodbye.

  For a second there was complete silence in the room. Her father stood by the fireplace, one hand on the mantelpiece, and glowered at her. Mother was perched on the arm of the settee; she had her hand up to her throat, as if she was struggling to breathe.

  ‘I cannot believe my daughter was involved in something like this and had to be questioned by the police,’ her father eventually barked at her. ‘Get to your room now and I will come and deal with you in a minute.’

  That order terrified her. At best it would be a severe beating, the worst was a repeat of what he had made her do to him at Christmas. She rushed out into the hall and was just on the first stair when she heard her mother speak.

  ‘How convenient this is for you, Archie. I suppose you think it will distract me from what you’ve done.’