The top of the paper drew Morton’s attention. ‘Argus’ The cuttings were taken from the Brighton Argus, which, he realised now, were not online. The other stories which he had read about Grace’s exploits had been from other county newspapers. What else might the Brighton papers contain about Grace? he wondered. Given that he already wanted to look into the suffragette goings-on at Sea View in Victoria Road, Brighton, a trip to East Sussex Record Office was now a necessity. ‘Can I keep hold of these bits for a while?’ he asked.
Margot took a moment to answer. ‘Maybe now’s a good time to pass them on to Juliette. I know they’ll be well looked after, here.’ She smiled and clasped her hands together. ‘Yes, this is their new home.’
‘We certainly will cherish them,’ he answered sincerely.
‘Then one day they’ll belong to little Matilda,’ Margot said.
‘Yes,’ Morton replied, still not sure that he wanted to give his daughter that name. ‘Just out of interest, Margot, where did you put the 60,001 Best Baby Names book?’
‘One of the bookshelves in your study. I had a bit of a tidy up in there—hell of a mess—I don’t know how you get anything done.’
Morton inwardly groaned.
Chapter Seven
29th September 1911, Brighton, East Sussex
Grace noticed the figure walking up Victoria Street towards the house. She was certain that it was him. She released the net curtain that was bunched in her hand, allowing it to fall back over her bedroom window. Her view now partly obscured, she leant closer and squinted hard. Yes, it was certainly him: Cecil—returned to check up on her again. She smiled at his persistence as he drew closer to the house. Then she noticed the bunch of flowers that he was holding and her smile widened and lit her eyes.
She moved away from the window and checked herself in the mirror. There was no rush to get downstairs, as there had once been when he had come to visit. Olivia and Minnie’s initial misgivings about him had dissolved and he had won them over after taking the lodging room opposite Holloway Prison. They had been delighted to have a window from which they could, night and day, shout messages of solidarity through a megaphone to the imprisoned suffragettes. It was not the taking of the room, though, that had endeared him to Grace, as it had the other women, it was his motives. ‘I know it’ll be tough in there,’ he had shouted up to her cell window. ‘I just wanted you to have a friendly face nearby—to know that whatever happens, I’ll be just across the street. Every night there’ll always be a light on for you.’ His kind-heartedness had made her cry more than any of the harsh treatments that had been metered out during her sentence; as much as she searched her past, she failed to find a single recollection of anyone doing anything as compassionate for her before. And, he had been true to his word: a light had remained on each night in his room for the entirety of her incarceration.
Grace picked up her walking cane and calmly left her bedroom. The injury sustained to her right leg on Downing Street had still to heal and navigating the three flights of stairs was a painful undertaking.
‘Grace, Cecil’s here for you!’ Olivia yelled up.
‘I’m on my way,’ she called back. ‘Tell him to pop back in a few hours, by which time I’ll be there.’
She reached the final flight of stairs and saw him waiting at the bottom, cradling the red roses.
‘Hello, Grace. How are you?’ he asked.
‘Better, thank you,’ she answered. ‘I won’t be joining the circus acrobatics team anytime soon, though.’
‘I got you these from the market,’ he said, offering the flowers.
‘Thank you,’ she said, touched. It was another first for her—nobody had ever bought her flowers before. ‘I’ll put them in water. Tea?’
‘If it’s not too much trouble. Do you need a hand?’
Grace nodded. ‘Thank you.’
Under Grace’s guidance, Cecil placed the flowers in a vase of water and made two cups of tea, which he carried out to the terrace at the rear of the house.
Outside, the sun was high and hot, beating down onto the large parasol raised above a white cast-iron table and set of four chairs. Cecil pulled one of the chairs out for Grace to sit upon.
She nodded her gratitude, simultaneously hating feeling like an invalid but all the while grateful for the assistance. Cecil sat opposite her and perched his elbows on the table.
‘Is the leg getting any better?’ he asked.
‘Slowly,’ she answered. ‘The doctor is hopeful that I’ll eventually make a full recovery. How are you?’
Cecil shrugged. ‘I’m still trying to find a new job.’
Grace frowned as she poured the tea. ‘You really shouldn’t have resigned on my account, Cecil—but thank you.’
‘It was the least I could do,’ he said. ‘I hope it helped.’
More than you can know, she thought, sipping her tea. Much more. ‘It was very good of you—it did indeed help to know that there was a friend just a stone’s throw away.’
‘Are you ready to talk about it, yet?’ he asked. ‘Prison, I mean.’
She hadn’t spoken to anyone about it in any detail—she couldn’t. To retell it would be like revisiting an awful, dark, atrocious nightmare. At night-time, her brain seemed to delight in scavenging through the bones of her memories, replaying the most harrowing parts of her time there over and over, like a vivid projection from a Victorian magic lantern. When people had enquired about what had happened she had tended to gloss over the prison sentence and regale them with tales of the Downing Street escapade. She drank
