‘You’re sacking me? Me and me mum turned in good work,’ she had argued desperately.
‘No, love,’ had come the hardening tone. ‘Your mum worked for me. You only helped her. You wasn’t officially employed by me, so it’s not a case of sacking. I’m sorry but that’s how it stands. Goodbye.’
He had turned his back on her to stare down from his dusty office window at men in the warehouse moving stacks of hatboxes into waiting carts. She’d left, her visit over in four minutes flat.
Now she stood silent before this portly doctor, her dignity in being self-sufficient fading as the truth of his words sank in. Slowly came an idea that began to lift her heart. Work here. Live in. It had to be a godsend, but only if she could come to some arrangement for Dora.
She’d be cunning. Doctor Lowe wanted her for a reason. For that reason he would agree to anything.
‘I couldn’t possibly work for you if I ’ad to leave my sister on her own, Doctor Lowe,’ she said quietly. ‘She’s only thirteen and we’re alone now. I wouldn’t want ’er to be even more alone. So I’ll ’ave to refuse yer offer.’
His expression was almost one of dismay and fear and she knew she had scored. Unbelievable for a man to be so consumed by the need to keep alive a memory that should by now have been healing. She saw him pull himself up to his full, rotund height of five foot five.
‘I could find something for her to do, I suppose, but I couldn’t pay a wage. She would work for her keep – I can’t say more than that.’
Ellie gave him the briefest smile of gratitude, that he’d not helped her mother earlier still in her mind. His strange glance in response to her smile made her wonder if that too didn’t remind him of his daughter. She rather hoped so, perhaps a little heartlessly, but in her situation something like that could prove an advantage and allow her to play on it. She would find out just how as things developed. He owed her, came the thought – cut short as Florrie came with a steaming mug of cocoa for her.
There wasn’t much to clear out of the house: a few bits of Mum’s. Cheap trinkets, a few precious things she had hoarded, her beloved jet brooch which, as the years went on, had seen more visits to the pawnbroker’s than time at her neck – these went into a cardboard box Ellie would keep by her to the end of her days. Merely holding them made the tears flow. Yet at the funeral she’d remained dry-eyed, walking behind the coffin on its handcart to the churchyard at St John’s – a more prominent spot, paid for with the guinea Doctor Lowe had insisted she take back, as she would be working in his house from now on. This inability to shed tears as her mother’s coffin was lowered into its grave she could only attribute to the hatred that was in her heart for her father and this wish she had for revenge. Dora, on the other hand, had sobbed enough for the two of them.
Ellie had protested about taking back the guinea until he had finally said that, if she insisted on being proud, he could take it from her wages if that was what she wanted. This she’d agreed to, feeling her conscience clearer, promising herself that she’d take nothing more from him but her wage and, from what she did earn, put a little by towards a stone for Mum – by herself, no one else, just her.
Most of Mum’s clothes – which wasn’t much – she took to a second-hand dealer, who gave her a few pence for them. A few bits she kept back for herself. Mum’s jet brooch she fastened to the high collar of her dress and in her youthful way she promised herself she would wear it for ever in memory of her mother and as a constant reminder of the man she intended to make pay for walking off and leaving her as she lay on her sickbed.
The man who came to clear the house handed her a few shillings: daylight robbery maybe, but she had no option but to accept.
There was still no sign of her father. He didn’t know Mum had died. There was no word from Charlie either, gone a good month now. In the past he had gone away, usually after an argument, though never for this long. He’d be terribly upset when he found out what had happened. She didn’t care about her father, but Charlie was a different matter. She’d always felt close to Charlie.
She decided to leave word with Mrs Sharp next door, giving the new address where she’d be working. The Sharps’ home was a muddle but jolly, even though Mr Sharp was seldom in work. There were several younger children. Dolly, nearly the same age as herself, she got on well with. And there was Ronnie Sharp, recently turned eighteen; she got on well with him too. She liked him a lot. But her quest today was his mother.
‘Me dad – if he do come back, don’t say where I am,’ she instructed her. ‘See if you can worm out of ’im where he’s living and drop a note in to Doctor Lowe so I know where to find ’im.’ She didn’t say why. That was her business. Nor did she believe for one minute that he’d turn up unless he got himself into trouble.
What belongings he’d left behind she refused to even soil her hands with by trying to sell them, but instead threw them all out into the gutter to lie there in the mud from a morning’s rain. They’d been there hardly more than a minute before being pounced on by a cluster of women who appeared like magpies to paw over them. In five minutes
