Cora hooted with laughter. ‘Where’d you learn to talk stuff like that?’ She held up her hand. ‘No, don’t tell me. I ain’t sure if you’re genuine or the best little liar I ever met, but I ain’t hanging around here a minute longer than necessary.’ She walked off, heading back the way they had come.
Rose grabbed her bag and hobbled after her. ‘I’m sure that Mrs Colville will vouch for me, Cora. I just need to find out where she lives.’
Cora paused, glancing over her shoulder. ‘Maybe she’ll offer a reward. I mean, a girl has to earn a living. I could have been working instead of traipsing round the docks with you.’
‘I really am sorry.’
‘Of course you are.’ Cora stopped and turned to give Rose a searching look. ‘What am I going to do with you, Rosie? I can’t abandon you, even though common sense tells me that I should.’
‘Maybe I could spend the night at your lodgings?’ Rose suggested tentatively. ‘I haven’t got much money, but I think I have enough to pay my way – for one night, anyway.’
‘Oh, all right. I suppose I ain’t got no choice. You’d best come with me.’
Rose could hardly put one foot in front of the other by the time they reached the run-down building where Cora lived. Rose was completely disorientated and she could not have said where they were, except that she was glad to stumble into the relative warmth of the building when Cora ushered her inside.
‘It ain’t much, but this is where I doss down,’ Cora said firmly. ‘My room is upstairs.’ She mounted the narrow staircase, trailing her hand casually on the banister rail, which was blackened from years of grease and dirt. The flickering yellow gaslight popped and fizzed, adding its own pungent odour to the general fug, but Rose was too tired to be critical. It felt good to be safe from the outside world, even if some of the stair treads were rotten and several of the banister supports were broken or missing.
She had barely reached the first landing when a door opened and a man lurched out, ramming his cap on his head as he pushed past her and thundered down the stairs. A young woman poked her head out, grinning when she spotted Cora.
‘Had a good night, duck?’
Cora jerked her head in Rose’s direction. ‘Got a visitor, watch what you say, Flossie.’
‘Ooh, hark at her, girls.’ Flossie took a drag on her cigarette.
‘Shut up, you silly tart,’ Cora said affably. ‘Poor kid’s just got off the boat from the back of beyond and been let down by her bloke.’
‘We’ve all been there, luv.’ Flossie exhaled a plume of smoke at the grimy ceiling. ‘Did you see Regan hanging around downstairs?’
Cora shook her head. ‘No sign of him. I should take a break if I was you, girl. There’s not much doing out there tonight – it’s a real peasouper.’
Flossie’s throaty laugh echoed off the walls. ‘Good advice. I could use some beauty sleep.’ She stubbed her cigarette out on the doorpost, eyeing Rose curiously. ‘What’s your name, luv?’
‘It’s Rose Munday, miss.’
‘Nice to meet you, Rose. And it’s even nicer to have someone in the house what has good manners. Charmed, I’m sure. My name’s Flossie Boxer, and you can call me Flossie.’
‘Don’t listen to her yakking on and on.’ Cora opened a door further along the narrow passage. ‘Come on, Rose. This is where I hang out.’ She ushered Rose into a small room that contained a brass bed, a chest of drawers and a washstand. A single chair, draped with woollen stockings and a pair of stays, was placed in front of a fire that had burned down to nothing, and an overfull ashtray spilled cigarette butts onto the hearth. Cora tossed her feathered hat onto the bed, followed by her shawl, and she sat down to unlace her boots. ‘You can stay here tonight, but you’ll have to take the chair or sleep on the floor.’
‘Thank you.’ Rose glanced at the Windsor chair, which would not have been out of place in Sadie’s kitchen. ‘I’m so tired I could sleep almost anywhere.’
Cora gave her another searching look. ‘You’re whiter than the sheet on my bed. When did you last eat?’
‘Breakfast,’ Rose said, closing her eyes in an attempt to stop the room from spinning out of control. ‘I didn’t eat much because I was so excited at the thought of seeing Max again. It’s almost two years since we last met.’
‘That’s a long time to be apart. Are you sure he hasn’t changed his mind?’
‘I’ve known Max since I was a child. He wouldn’t behave like that and he wrote beautiful letters.’
Cora tossed one boot on the floor and began to unlace the other. ‘You’ve got more faith in men than I have, kid. In my experience they’re rats, all of ’em.’
Rose moved the grubby stays from the chair and sat down as another wave of dizziness threatened to overcome her. ‘I thought he’d be at the Captain’s House.’
‘Well, he weren’t, and you’ll have to get used to the idea that he’s changed his mind.’ Cora picked up a pillow and threw it to Rose. ‘Here, get your head down, love. You’ll have to wait for morning to get some grub. I don’t keep food in me room because of rats – the four-legged kind.’ Cora chuckled and turned on to her side with a creaking of bed springs. ‘There’s a spare blanket under me bed,’ she added sleepily. ‘Night-night.’
Rose slid off the chair, lifted the trailing edge of the coverlet to look under the bed, and found herself staring into the beady eyes of a huge spider. She retreated hastily and curled up as best she could on the chair, resting her head on the pillow. Cramped, stiff and cold, she thought longingly of her old room in the school house, and the tantalising aroma of baking that floated up from the kitchen where Sadie was undoubted queen. She and her husband, Laurence, ran the school that Max’s stepfather had built for the local children. Rose was in awe of Raven Dorincourt, but both Max and Jimmy thought the world of him. Even so, she preferred gentle, unworldly Laurence, who believed strongly that girls ought to be as well educated as boys, and she had benefited from his teaching.
As she struggled with the cold and damp of an English winter and the discomfort of trying to sleep in an upright chair, Rose was beginning to doubt the wisdom of her actions. Had she been carried away on a romantic dream, fuelled by ardent love letters from Max? More to the point, what would she do now that she was on her own in London? The questions kept coming but there were no answers. Eventually, she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.
‘Wake up.’
Someone was shaking her and Rose opened her eyes to such an unfamiliar scene that she thought she was dreaming.
‘You was dead to the world,’ Cora said cheerfully. ‘Put your boots on, Rose. We’re going out to get some breakfast.’
Rose stretched her cramped limbs, wincing with pain as the feeling came back to her hands and feet in the form of pins and needles. ‘Where are we going?’
‘There’s a coffee stall on Tower Hill.’ Cora sat on the edge of her bed and pulled on her boots. ‘How are you off for readies?’
‘I’ve got some money,’ Rose said
