of seconds to realise where she was. She glanced at the clock on the top of the dresser: 7.30. When she’d arrived here ten days ago, the receptionist had told her breakfast was between 7.30 and 8.15 and she knew she couldn’t afford to miss it. Her meagre wage packet and holiday money wouldn’t keep her much longer. She had fallen into a pattern of eating as much as she could in the morning and making do with a tuppenny bag of chips and a cup of tea at lunchtime. It was all she could afford.
George had never shown up. Bonnie couldn’t understand why. Something must have happened to him. Was he ill? Had he had an accident? He wouldn’t have deserted her; he wouldn’t. Every night she worried about him and cried herself to sleep. The obvious thing was to go back to Worthing, but what if he’d just been delayed for some reason and she missed him? Bonnie had gone over and over what he’d told her, and their plans together. Everything was crystal clear in her mind – so why wasn’t he here?
As soon as the footsteps had gone she nipped across the hallway to the bathroom and gave herself a quick wash. She was dressed and downstairs by eight.
The dining room looked rather tired. It was wallpapered but, probably because it was so hard to find several rolls of the same wallpaper, it was a mish-mash of non-complementary paper, giving the room a rather confused look. The only empty table was next to the kitchen door and Bonnie preferred to keep herself to herself.
‘Here we are, dear,’ said the waitress as she put a pot of tea and some hot water on the table. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ Bonnie poured herself a cup of tea and when she was sure no one was looking, she palmed a couple of slices of bread into her handbag for later. The waitress came back and plonked a plate in front of her. Bonnie stared at the greasy pile and her stomach churned. She tried to force it down but even before she’d left the room she was feeling decidedly unwell. She wasn’t used to big fry-ups in the morning and right now it was the last thing she wanted to eat.
Every morning as they left the dining room the guests were told they had to leave their rooms by 10am and that they couldn’t return before 2pm in order to facilitate the cleaning. Dinner was at 6pm sharp. Having forced down as much of the greasy breakfast as she could manage, Bonnie booked herself in for one more night. George was bound to turn up at the station tonight. He wouldn’t let her down. Would he?
As usual, her first port of call was Victoria station where she enquired if anyone had left a message for her. It didn’t sound right for a respectable young woman to be chasing a man so she pretended she was married. ‘I was supposed to be meeting my husband,’ she told the station master. ‘Mr George Matthews.’ The station master shook his head. ‘Never heard of him.’ She was bitterly disappointed. Perhaps it was time to accept the fact that George wasn’t coming. She didn’t want to think of a reason why he wasn’t coming and she really couldn’t go back to Worthing, so she’d have to make another plan. She was positive that George wouldn’t have let her down if he could help it. He wasn’t that sort of man. He loved her. He wanted their baby as much as she did. True, the baby wasn’t planned, but George was fine about it. She remembered the moment he’d given her the locket.
‘One day we shall put a picture of our baby in it,’ he’d smiled.
Tears pricked her eyes but she wouldn’t give way to them. What good would that do? The obvious thing was to find Honeypot Lane and the job George had lined up for her; but then another thought crossed her mind. If he had let her down, then perhaps the job in Stanmore didn’t exist either. She hated herself for thinking like this, but should she risk going all that way and using some of her precious resources for nothing? She had to be practical, didn’t she? Her stomach churned. She didn’t want to be practical. She wanted George.
Once Bonnie had lost her fight to keep her breakfast down, she decided to set off to find a job of her own. She remembered that when she’d scanned the evening paper she bought on that first night, she’d come across an advertisement for an employment agency. She had left the newspaper on her chest of drawers and whoever cleaned her room had never moved it. Bonnie now made a careful note of the address.
The offices of the London and County Domestic Employment Agency left much to be desired but it was very close to the station. From the roadside, she could hear the trains thundering in and out. The façade of the building was grimy with soot and, walking up the stone steps and wandering through the open door, she noticed that the walls themselves were still pockmarked with bomb damage. The paintwork was badly in need of a new coat and the colour scheme in the hallway, dark brown and cream, was from a bygone era. Clearly Harold Macmillan and his Ministry of Housing and Local Government hadn’t got this far yet. When she took her hand from the guardrail even her glove was covered in smut. Should she go in? What if they asked too many questions? How much should she tell them? After twenty minutes of pacing up and down the street, Bonnie climbed the outer steps.
The London and County was three doors along a dingy corridor. As she knocked and walked in, a middle-aged woman with tightly permed hair and wearing some very fashionable glasses looked up from her typewriter. Bonnie introduced herself stiffly and handed over her references.
‘Do take a seat, Miss Rogers,’ said the woman, indicating some chairs behind her. ‘I shall tell Mrs Smythe that you are here.’
Taking Bonnie’s references with her, she stepped towards a glass-fronted door to her left and knocked. A distant voice called and the woman walked in and closed the door behind her.
Bonnie looked at herself in the wall mirror, glad that she had stopped crying. If she’d turned up with red eyes and a blotchy face, it wouldn’t have helped her cause. She looked smart. Her hat, a new one she’d bought from Hubbard’s using the staff discount, suited her. It was a navy, close-fitting baker boy beret, which she wore slightly to the left of her head. Her hair had a side parting with a deep wave on the right side of her face and was curled under on her shoulders. To set off her outfit, Bonnie always carried a navy pencil-slim umbrella. She liked being smart. One of Miss Reeves’s little remarks came back to mind. ‘Smartness equals efficiency; efficiency equals acceptance; and acceptance means respect.’
She unbuttoned her coat to reveal her dark blue suit with the cameo brooch George had given her pinned on the lapel. It was only from Woolworth’s, she knew that, but it looked very pretty, especially next to her crisp white blouse. She absentmindedly smoothed her stomach and pulled down her skirt to get rid of the creases. Thank goodness the baby didn’t show yet. Turning towards the chairs, Bonnie had a choice of three, one with a soft sagging cushion, a high backed leather chair and a wooden chair with a padded seat. Lowering herself carefully onto the wooden chair, Bonnie placed her matching navy handbag on her knees, checked that her black court shoes still looked highly polished, and waited anxiously.
Presently, the secretary came back with a tall languid-looking woman in a tweed skirt and white blouse. She introduced herself as Mrs Smythe and invited Bonnie to step into her office.
Mrs Smythe, as would be expected of the owner of a highly respected agency, had a cut-glass English accent. She had a round face with a downy complexion and wore no make-up apart from a bright red gash of lipstick. The woman examined Bonnie’s references carefully. ‘These are excellent, Miss Rogers,’ she said eventually. ‘But shop work is very different from working in the domestic setting.’
‘I want to train as a nursery nurse,’ said Bonnie, ‘but I am not quite experienced enough to be accepted. However, I am a hard worker and I am willing to learn.’
‘When did you cease your last employment?’
‘Just over a week ago.’
‘May I ask, why did you leave Hubbard’s?’ Mrs Smythe was going back
