I fell back, hard, yelped, very much like a girl, and my hat fell off. A group of men gathered round to watch the fight. I was sure I was about to receive a good thrashing, but then my newly acquired doe-eyed girl arrived. She elbowed her way through and knelt at my side with her arms around my shoulders, holding me tight as if I were her sweetheart.
‘Lay off, you bastards! Can’t you see it’s a girl,’ she shouted.
There was laughter and whooping, a ‘Fucking ’ell!’ and the group dispersed. My bald-headed foe appeared most confused, shrugged and walked off.
The girl pulled me to my feet and gave me back my hat. She walked me as far as the cathedral and then left, saying she had to get back to her mother’s, that only whores stayed out later, whores miserable enough to risk getting cut by the Whitechapel murderer. That wasn’t her, she told me; she only went with strange men for the little extras – meat pies, like she’d told me.
‘You’re lucky – you nearly got a black eye for your troubles. Tell me, what man is worth that?’ she said.
‘I’m grateful, I really am.’ I rummaged through Thomas’s inside pockets for what coins I could find.
‘It’s all right. To save you the bother, I already took what you had.’ She grinned and showed me the coins she’d lifted from my pockets.
I laughed. I hadn’t noticed this time.
‘They may be soft and queer in St James’s,’ she said, ‘but you’ll get yourself cut to pieces and tossed in the Thames messing with those boys.’
She took my cheeks in both hands and kissed me. Her plump lips were dry, and she squished them into mine. ‘Goodbye, my love. Come see me again. I’ll wait for you,’ she said.
As she walked away, I noticed she had bare feet. I had no clue how she wasn’t dead from the cold.
*
It took an age for me to get back home. I half staggered and half ran, my feet sore and blistered. A cartman nodded as I passed – I’d forgotten I was dressed as a man. I needed the journey; I had so much going through my head, it was fit to burst with all that I’d seen. All this time, I had wondered what sort of man I had married, but never in my imagination had I anticipated this. To think how my husband and I were the same in some ways. I felt by turns revulsion, and shock, and disbelief, and, believe it or not, sympathy, and then I found the whole thing bloody hilarious. We really did fit together, but not in the way I’d expected.
When I reached the house, I crept round the back and let myself in through the kitchen door. To be met by Mrs Wiggs, who screamed at the sight of me. ‘Murderer!’ she shrieked, standing there in her nightgown, pale as a ghost and brandishing a shovel in her shaking arms.
I screamed back, which brought her to her senses. She let out a huge sigh, lowered the shovel and put a hand to her chest.
‘Thank God Almighty,’ she said. ‘I heard the scraping of the gate and thought the Whitechapel beast had commuted to Chelsea.’
As she looked me up and down, she stiffened. ‘Why are you dressed in Thomas’s clothes? Mrs Lancaster, you stink of… Where have you been?’
‘It’s a long story and I can’t explain. I must go to bed, Mrs Wiggs. I suggest you do the same.’ I walked past her, conscious that I’d need to come up with something, however incredible, by morning.
I must have taken two, maybe three steps when I realised that she’d just referred to my husband as Thomas. I stopped and was about to challenge her when I was struck on the back of the head. There was blinding pain, my knees buckled, and everything went black.
32
‘Good morning, Susannah. How are we feeling today?’ Mrs Wiggs sailed into the room, as she had done every morning since my return from the Duke of Wellington. She was always radiant and cheery these days.
I tended to wake happy enough, being sunny and clear-skied by nature, but then the rainclouds would rush up to meet me and drag me back down. It had been days, perhaps even weeks, since I’d lost my liberty. I’d lost track of time altogether and had long since given up struggling against the restraints that tied me to the bedposts. I remembered being hit on the head and falling to my knees in the kitchen. I remembered the men dressed as women at the back of the pub, remembered being kissed by the big-eyed girl with bare feet, remembered seeing my husband and the boy with pearl earrings and stays. I just wasn’t sure quite when that was.
When I woke on the first day, I screamed, as anyone would have, at the discovery that my wrists and ankles were bound by leather straps. I was trapped, tethered to the bed like a lunatic at the asylum. Hearing my shrieks, Mrs Wiggs and Thomas both marched in, one behind the other, like stoic little guards at Buckingham Palace. They stood at the foot of my bed, side by side, and when I begged to be told what was going on, it was Mrs Wiggs who spoke. Thomas just stared at me with flat, dead eyes, a raised eyebrow, and both hands in his pockets.
‘You were dressed as a man and you attacked me,’ she said. ‘I feared for my life.’
‘You have made a habit of hurting yourself,’ said