at him blankly for a moment before suddenly recognising his face.
“Richard!” she said with a genuinely pleased smile. “You’re the last person I expected to come calling on me today.” The youthful lightness in her voice made it sound as if her life was one long social round. “Come on inside,” she beckoned him, “you look tired.”
She bustled him into a tidy room. A chair and stool sat in front of the fireplace, although the grate was empty. There was a worn table under the window and a bed in the far corner. It was small, but Nottingham could see she had everything she needed.
Meg eased herself into the chair and gestured to the stool.
“Sit yourself down, Richard. And then you’d better tell me why you’re here. From your face it’s not good news.”
He lowered himself awkwardly, still with no idea how to tell her.
“Is it something to do with Pamela?” she asked, and he nodded mutely in reply.
“You’ve come to tell me she’s dead, haven’t you?” The words were stark, all the joy suddenly stripped away.
He looked up and faced her, his heart as empty as hers.
“I have, Meg, yes. I’m sorry.”
She was silent for a long time, then raised her right hand, knuckles gnarled into ungainly shapes, the fingers thick.
“Sewed all my life to make a living, until I couldn’t do it any more.”
“I know,” he told her.
“I saw her settled with you, then married to Tom.” Meg shook her head. “What’s wrong with life, Richard?”
“What do you mean?” He gazed at her quizzically, trying to find the meaning beyond her words.
“I’m still alive and she’s gone.” She cocked her head at the walls around them. “I’m happy enough here, but…” Her words trailed off and he could see her eyes glisten as the tears began to form. “How did she die?”
He reached out and tenderly placed his hand on her arm. “She was murdered, Meg.” He knew it would hurt, but he had to offer her the truth. She deserved his honesty.
Nottingham could hear her praying under her breath, her eyes closed. He left his hand where it was, keeping her anchored to the world. Finally she focused on him again.
“Thank you,” she told him.
“I’m so sorry,” was all he could manage. To his ears it sounded empty, forlorn.
“She had two miscarriages with Tom, did you know that?” Meg told him, drifting away on bitter memories. “And a stillborn son that almost killed her.”
“I had no idea,” he said sadly, shaking his head. They’d had no word after she married.
“She survived all that. It was God’s will, it had to be. I thought she was safe then, even if she couldn’t have babbies. And now you’re telling me He saved her just so someone could murder her.” She sounded as bleak as a midwinter night.
“Why was she even back in Leeds, Meg?” He asked the question that had been nagging at him since he’d seen Pamela’s body.
Her sigh came from a place deep inside.
“Tom died, a year or so ago.”
He shook his head.
“I didn’t know. And she returned after that?”
Meg nodded.
“The landlord turned her out. He needed the cottage for a labourer, not a widow.”
“Then why didn’t she come to me?” he wondered imploringly. “I’d have helped her find a post.”
“Oh, I know you would. I told her to go and see you.” Her hands tugged and pulled at the old material of her dress. “But she’d developed some strange ideas out there, lad. She felt she daren’t be a burden to anyone.”
“A burden?” Nottingham said, astonished and confused by the idea. “How could she have been? We loved her.”
“I know. We all loved her.” The woman sighed again, and age settled heavily on her face. “But she wasn’t going to listen to me. She wasn’t going to listen to anyone, come to that. She’d never really talk about what happened there, but she’d changed. She was… harder, I suppose you’d say.”
“From the look of things, she’d become a whore,” he informed Meg cautiously.
The old woman nodded again, sadly.
“Oh aye, I know all about that. We argued about it enough. She didn’t want to, but once she’d made her decision, she refused to have any regrets. Claimed it was the only way she could make a living. She tried to get work as a servant, but she didn’t have any references, and no one wanted her when there were girls of twelve and thirteen available.” She looked into the Constable’s face. “Selling her body didn’t stop her being a good woman, Richard. She was here every week, you know, bringing me a little money, whatever she could afford. It wasn’t much, but she gave it gladly, and it made my life a little easier.”
“When did you last see her?” Nottingham asked.
Meg thought back, counting through the long days. “Let me see… Thursday, it’d be. She brought me a little piece of ribbon she’d bought at the market. It’s still over there, on the table. I told her I didn’t need any ribbons at my age, but she said it’d make me feel like a girl again.” Meg gave a brief, tight smile that flickered off her face as soon as it arrived. “And she was right, well, for a minute or two, anyway.”
With difficulty she pushed herself out of the chair and crossed slowly to the window, picking a small length of bright blue ribbon off the table and rubbing it with her fingertips. He remembered the torn blue ribbon at the corpse’s neck.
“Did she still wear that old token I gave her?” Nottingham asked.
“Every time I saw her,” Meg replied with a nod, a warm glint of memory in her eyes for a second. “She always loved that, Richard.”
It was one of the very few items his mother had refused to part with, even at her poorest; her half of a lovers’ token. A penny, cut jaggedly in two, with a hole drilled in the metal so it could be worn around the neck. It was used at a parting, a vow of love, even a wedding gift, and a promise to return, however long the time might be. The halves would come together again one day, and the broken tokens would become a single whole.
For his mother it had remained broken. He didn’t know who gave it to her. Vaguely he recalled a man who’d visited for a while, but there’d been no lover who came back to save her. Nottingham had been the only one at her bedside in the end. Yet she’d worn it around her neck faithfully until she died.
He wasn’t even sure why he’d kept it; the thing had done her no good. By itself the token meant nothing to him. There were other, happier memories that didn’t involve her waiting and hoping in vain for someone who’d never intended to return.
But Pamela had been taken by the coin when she first saw it. He’d explained about broken tokens, and the romantic idea of parted lovers reunited had brought a bright gleam to her young face. So for her birthday one year he’d given it to her.
Then he looked at Meg and he could feel the hurt twisting up inside her, joining all the other pains of her long life — the loss of her husband and daughter. Losing her granddaughter might be the cruellest blow of all.
“Did she seem strange?” he asked eventually. “Was anything troubling her?”
“No more than usual.” Meg sounded distracted, distant. “She’d stopped being a carefree soul by the time she came back here, Richard. Half the time she looked like she had the weight of the world pressing on her.”
“Had anyone hurt her or threatened her?”
“Of course people had hurt her.” Sour flintiness crept into Meg’s voice. “For God’s sake, she was a whore! Men used her and hit her. She was usually bruised or cut when I saw her. But she was still my Pamela. I could still see the little girl in there.”
“I know,” he said softly, and realised he’d seen it too, even in the silent scream of a dead face.
“I can’t afford to bury her,” the old woman told him.
“I’ll take care of that,” Nottingham assured her patiently. “I’ll take care of everything. And I’ll make sure you’re there.”
“Thank you.” She looked at him with sad warmth. “And thank you for coming to tell me yourself.”
