rooms and the children would be at school for most of the day, so it wasn’t as if Becky would have to do much nannying.
It might be the perfect opportunity to reassess things. Maybe even catch the eye of one of those celebrity friends that dropped by … but still the country wasn’t London, and London was the most likely place where a girl with no prospects but a hell of a lot of ambition could find fame, fortune and fools ready to give them to her.
‘No. It’s not happening, Babs. I came second in Big Brother …’
‘What you mean is that you didn’t win Big Brother …’
‘Whatever! Come on! You could find me some other job. Something more exciting, better paid.’ Becky zipped up her tatty holdall. ‘You know, I could do a kiss-and-tell on how Jos Sedley did me wrong.’ No, that wasn’t enough. ‘How he turned out to be a complete love rat after I’d given him …’
‘Boring!’ Babs yawned exaggeratedly. ‘The photos of him tumbling out of that club with his hand down your dress were one thing, but you wouldn’t get more than a couple of hundred quid for a follow-up.’ She examined her neon-pink talons. ‘The problem, my darling, is that you missed your window. I hate to be the one to say I told you so, but I told you so. Couldn’t even get you a thousand if you dropped your knickers for the Sunday Sport. Are you done packing, ’cause you do have a train to catch?’
Mrs Sedley had gone back to bed so it was left to Amelia to say a fitting goodbye. She clung on to Becky and Becky clung back, in the vain hope that if she attached herself barnacle-like to Amelia, then she might never have to leave.
‘We have to go now,’ Sam said implacably and firmly from behind them, and Babs sighed impatiently and Amelia was persuaded to release Becky from her Vulcan clutches.
‘This is from Mummy,’ she murmured brokenly, tucking an envelope, which at least felt like it contained a wad of banknotes, into Becky’s hand. ‘And you’re still my sister from another mister. I’m going to text you before you’ve even got in the car, and I get really long holidays so I’ll see you soon.’
‘I probably won’t be allowed the time off,’ Becky said with a pathetic little sniff that tore at Amelia’s soul, though Becky wouldn’t be taken for a fool twice and she was going to get time off and sick pay and whatever the going rate was for nannying the children of a famous actor. ‘You know how people exploit their domestic staff. I bet I won’t even get minimum wage with the hours they’ll expect me to work.’
‘Oh, Becky, I wish there was something I could do,’ Amelia cried imploringly.
‘It’s all right,’ Becky said as Babs took her arm in an uncompromising grip and began walking her towards the door. ‘I don’t blame you.’
No, Amelia was the one person that she didn’t blame. She blamed George Wylie, above all others. Next came Barbara Pinkerton, who could easily have found something exciting and well paid for Becky to do, and also Becky was pretty sure that Jemima’s bungalow had already been sold and that Babs would make sure she’d never see a penny of the £250,000 it was worth when Becky had had a valuation done before Jemima had died. She also blamed Jos Sedley for being weak and foolish and easily influenced but alas, not easily influenced by her. And though Mrs Sedley had sent her on her way with £500, Becky added her name to the list of people who’d done her wrong: one day she’d be in a position to pay them all back.
But right now, as she sat in a second-class carriage on her way to Southampton where she had to change on to a branch line, Becky wasn’t in any position but to take the job that Barbara Pinkerton had grudgingly found for her.
She was twenty, without any family. It wasn’t just a line she spun for sympathy; those were the facts. There wasn’t a parent or a grandparent, not even a stray aunt or uncle who’d take her in. Apart from the few trinkets she’d acquired from the Sedleys to go with the trinkets that Jemima Pinkerton would have wanted her to have, Becky had no assets. She didn’t even have a bank account.
If she threw herself on the mercy of the state, she might be found a bed in a hostel and if she was really, really lucky she’d be given a zero-hours contract on minimum wage stacking shelves or working in a call centre. Which was fine. The world needed people to stack shelves and work in call centres, but Becky wasn’t one of those people. Just as George Wylie and Amelia and the five M’s had been born into wealth and privilege, Becky had been born with beauty and a native cunning. She was meant for more than a bed in a hostel and a zero-hours contract. Maybe she was meant for gracious country living. Wafting about a huge mansion, being spoiled by a very famous actor in his dotage. As soon as she could get a decent WiFi signal, Becky would google the hell out of Sir Pitt Crawley, she decided, and she straightened her posture and put her shoulders back. Down but not out. If she didn’t make the most of this opportunity that fate had thrown at her, then she deserved to be stacking shelves.
*
It was raining when Becky finally reached her destination: Mudbury. The light was fading and everything was grey as she came out of the station to find herself in a dismal little backwater, rather than a charming and bucolic village. It boasted a convenience store, which was closed, a pub, which was less of a charming country inn and more like a glorified Portakabin, and a bus-shelter covered in graffiti.
Only one other person had got off the train and they had already got into a car that had been waiting outside the station and driven off.
Babs had told her that someone would pick her up at the station but there were no signs of life. She squinted left, then right for the welcoming glow of a pair of headlights coming towards her, but all she could see was sheeting rain in all directions.
Becky hurried over to the bus shelter but there was no timetable and from the barrenness of her surroundings, it was clear that Mudbury was the type of place where the bus only came once on market days and market days only happened every other week. She shivered inside her jacket. When she had left London, it had been late summer, the sun still shining, the weather warm enough that most days she didn’t even need a jacket. But in the course of four hours and two trains, winter had come.
She debated waiting inside the pub. It might be quite cosy once she was inside – or she could be raped and murdered by a bunch of inbred villagers. Just when Becky had decided that at least she’d be dry even if she did have to fight them off with a pool cue, she heard the rumbling of an engine over the persistent drumming of the rain on the roof of the bus shelter. When she peered out, there were the headlights she was longing to see. She didn’t even care if it was her lift. She ran into the road to wave whoever it was down and beg them to take her back to civilisation. Or to the nearest mainline station, at least.
The battered, ancient Land Rover came to a juddering halt and Becky scrabbled at the door handle, which swung open with help from inside.
‘You be the young lady coming up t’ Big House?’
There was no light inside the vehicle, just two shadowy figures, one of which had just spoken to her in such a rough, local dialect that Becky had trouble understanding him.
‘I’m Becky Sharp and you’re late!’ she snapped. ‘Does Sir Crawley know that you’ve kept me waiting in the pouring rain?’
There was a diffident grunt. Then, ‘Just light drizzle, lassie. Jump in. Don’t mind old Hodson. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
It turned out that the shadowy figure closest to her was a dog; a big, hairy, foul-smelling beast that growled at Becky as she hefted her bags and herself
