She thought suddenly of Chester Morrison and wondered how he would cope when he tumbled into hard times – as he inevitably would, along with everyone else. Perhaps his wife would leave him all over again. She wasn’t sure if that thought made her pity him or feel that it would serve him right.
But no matter what the future brought, she would be there at Simon’s side, would live in a slum with him if need be. It wouldn’t come to that, of course. There were still her savings, kept for when and if there proved no other way out. What she didn’t want was to see this money go the way of their other finances. And so, for the time being, she held on to it.
For the first time she felt sorry for those thousands of small investors who had sunk all their hard-earned cash in so-called gilt-edge certainties, dreaming of watching it multiply to give them a better future. Now the dream was gone, all of them caught in the market and, worse, thousands losing their jobs as mass unemployment began to bite.
Were she and Simon about to join them? Not if she could help it, she thought determinedly.
‘The bank’s calling in the loans,’ Simon whispered as he folded the letter. ‘They’re taking the business. We’ve nothing left. We’ve lost everything we’ve worked for.’
‘Not everything,’ Julia said, her lips tightening.
It was time to delve into her savings, money the bank had no idea she had and were not likely to know. But was it enough to rescue them from this hole into which they were being thrown? She’d never really totted it up. She was no miser, crouching in a corner counting, counting; rubbing her hands over every farthing. It was there just in case and that was all it had been to her.
With Simon looking on, Julia pulled back the corner of the heavy, luxurious carpet. Beneath lay the loose square of floorboard which, using her fingernails, she took only a moment to prise up to reveal the metal box fitted smugly in the wide space it occupied. She lifted it out by its handle; it felt lighter than she’d expected as she set it down on top of the dressing table.
She caught a glimpse of Simon’s expression and immediately read his mind. It was saying that whatever she’d saved in this box would never be enough to start them on their way up again – a few hundred pounds maybe, no more than that. She looked away. A few hundred pounds! She’d been stashing it away for years, there had to be two or three thousand.
With a key from a small drawer in the dressing table she unlocked the lid and opened it to lift out the sizeable wad of notes and divide it in two for them to share the counting. The resigned look on Simon’s face as he started to count began to change to one of incredulity. So did hers. She hadn’t realized how much she had managed to accumulate by adding a few notes here and a few there over the years.
When they had both finished, straightening up to look at each other, Simon’s face was a picture to behold.
‘What have you made yours?’ he queried, his voice hoarse.
‘Three thousand odd,’ she answered in a whisper. ‘Give or take a few smaller notes, unless I counted wrong. I kept losing track. And yours?’
He took a deep breath: ‘Five thousand seven hundred and ninety.’ His eyes were wide and staring. ‘How in God’s name did you manage to accrue…?’ He fell silent, unable to go on.
Julia laughed. ‘Thrift!’ she said.
Of course, it was nowhere near enough to clear their huge bank debts. They were still going to lose their business. Keeping it was past hope. What the money could do was give them a modest start somewhere else. Even so, in this present climate it wouldn’t be easy.
‘Do we have the courage to start again?’ she asked, her laughter gone. She knew she had. She had done it once, she could do it again. But could she count on Simon?
All around them people were giving up, seeing no glimmer of light. But some were fighting back. In the East End battles were taking place between police and workless demonstrators over mass unemployment.
‘We’ll get through this,’ she encouraged.
He responded with an enigmatic half-smile that conveyed neither yes nor no.
It was all gone. Standing at the door of the empty lounge while the removal men struggled down the stairs with the last of the apartment’s furniture, Julia looked around the spacious hallway. The doors to the box room, the two large, sumptuous bedrooms, the kitchen and the bathroom were all closed.
Now that she was being forced to leave it all, it was as if she were seeing the place for the first time. The same thing had happened when she’d had to leave the lovely family house in Sewardstone Road all those years ago. She was reminded of it now.
Fighting her emotions, she turned away, buttoning her jacket across her growing abdomen. Three months to go to the birth of their baby – Simon’s and hers.
Slowly she pulled on her hat, picked up her handbag and the small case containing a few personal items, and prepared to follow the removal men downstairs.
Simon called up, ‘Are you ready, love? The taxi’s waiting.’
‘Coming!’ she called back.
She crossed the hall and, without pausing even to glance over her shoulder, closed the door firmly behind her.
The furniture van was taking its time. Awaiting its arrival, Julia and Simon stood gazing at the empty living room of the flat they’d rented above a tiny shop.
‘It’s not bad, is it?’ Simon said, his arm going about her shoulders. ‘It can’t compare with the one we had
