Prudence stood for a moment on the step, her hand raised to the lion’s head door-knocker. She could sense Andrew’s nearness. It wasn’t a smell, wasn’t anything she saw or heard, but she simply knew that the man she had married was behind this door. She knocked.
After a few seconds, she knocked again. The door opened to reveal a wedge of light and the left side of a woman’s face. ‘Hello?’ said the apparition. ‘Who is it?’
Prudence cleared her throat. ‘Prudence Spencer. I used to be Worthington.’
‘Oh.’ The head bobbed up and down, then a hand came forward and touched the frizzy hair. ‘What do you want?’
‘To see Worthington.’
‘Oh.’ Lottie wavered, didn’t know what to say or do. Had she said anything out of place to Ivy Crumpsall? She bit her lip. No, no, she had definitely told the old woman that her husband’s name was Alan Westford. ‘There’s no Worthingtons here, sorry.’ The door began to close, but Prudence moved quickly, copied the age-old trick of tradesfolk by wedging her foot in the gap.
Lottie glanced down at the lambskin boot. She was unable to close the door. She was unable to tell the woman to bugger off, because Prudence Worthington – or Spencer – was as near to gentry as Lottie had ever encountered.
A man’s voice called, ‘Shut that bloody door, Lottie.’
Prudence froze. She was already cold on the outside, but hearing him and knowing that her instincts had been right almost undid her altogether. A lump of frost descended to her stomach. ‘Let me in,’ she said softly. ‘Let me in immediately.’
Lottie turned and fled up the stairs, leaving Prudence with one foot in the house and the other on the doorstep. After a second or two, the visitor stepped into the house, careful to leave the door slightly ajar. She needed an escape route. Just in case she couldn’t cope, she wanted an easy way out of what promised to be a terrifying situation. The panic touched her mind, caressed it, swallowed it, sent darts right through her body. The need to run was almost overwhelming, yet she had to persevere for Sally’s sake.
‘Who the hell is it?’ He walked into the tiny hallway, stopped in his tracks when he answered his own question. ‘Prudence.’
‘I . . . I’m not alone,’ she stammered. ‘There’s someone waiting for me outside.’
He stepped away, backed into the living room. ‘Lottie?’ he screamed.
‘It’s not her fault,’ said Prudence. ‘I guessed. I’ve known for weeks that you were back.’
He walked to the fireplace, stood with his back to the flames.
Prudence remembered that posture. Whenever she had ‘done wrong’, he had assumed this stance while delivering a lecture. She stared at him for what seemed an endless time, knew that she would have recognized him even in the dark. He seemed shorter, less square about the shoulders. The eyes, which had always been convex, looked as if they had been pushed into his head, because the once-firm flesh around them had collapsed into unhealthy, grey folds. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked eventually.
He lifted his shoulders. ‘Free country, isn’t it?’
‘There are people here who would dance on your grave,’ she advised him unnecessarily. ‘Women, particularly.’
The eyes screwed themselves tightly as he lit a cigarette from the end of another. ‘Since you cleaned me out, you’ve kindly paid my so-called debts in that sphere. So I’ve nothing to worry about.’
‘Except Sally.’ Prudence heard the change in his breathing, watched a vein as it swelled on his left temple. ‘You have come for Sally. You have married that poor, stupid woman just so that you might take away Ivy’s granddaughter.’ She lifted a hand, waited until he had closed his mouth against the words he wanted to say. ‘Hear me out, Andrew—’
‘Alan,’ he snapped.
She chose to ignore the interruption. ‘Listen for once in your life. Lottie was gone for seven years. There was no word from her, no message. As is the case when a spouse goes missing, Lottie was declared dead by the authorities. Ivy and Tom had papers drawn up in view of Sally’s status as an orphan. Sally is already adopted, Andrew. Her guardians are Maureen and Tom Marchant. Sally has continued to live with the grandmother who—’
‘She’s no grandmother to that child—’
‘With the grandmother who has cared for her since Lottie’s disappearance. Lottie abandoned a defenceless seven-year-old whose father lay dying. No welfare committee on this earth would send Sally back to her mother. No court in Britain is going to allow that young girl to live with you and Lottie.’
Strangely, he was not surprised to hear any of this. Just as he had not thought about Bert Simpson, he had ignored reason when thinking about Sally. His only wish had been to frighten Ivy Crumpsall literally to death. Lottie’s visit to Crompton Way had not been enough, but his own planned appearance as Sally’s rightful father might have done the trick. And the woman standing here had removed his chance of pleasure. ‘Get out,’ he growled.
‘I’m not afraid of you any more.’ This was the truth. At last, he was becoming a creature of little import. ‘I know your game, you see. You’re fully aware that you and Lottie won’t get Sally. You’ve never expected to become a father to her. But your physical presence in the Bolton area is supposedly sufficient to upset the apple-cart, as is your alliance with Sally’s mother. Checkmate, Andrew. We’ve been one step ahead of you for many years.’
He took a stride towards her, stopped abruptly when Lottie appeared in the doorway. ‘What are you up to now?’ he asked.
Lottie placed a large bag on the floor. ‘I’m off,’ she told him. She touched Prudence’s shoulder. ‘Will you give me a lift to town, please?’
‘Of course.’
Westford looked at his two wives. Prudence had aged well, was smart and stylish in the dark brown coat. Lottie looked like a magnified version of a cheap prize from Bolton’s visiting fair, a badly made doll that had fallen off a shelf to be trampled underfoot by thoughtless pleasure-seekers. And that, he supposed, was exactly what had happened to her in real life. That was what she had deserved, too. ‘Bugger off, the pair of you,’ he shouted.
Lottie came to stand beside her husband’s first wife. ‘Listen to me and all,’ she said quietly. ‘If you go within a mile of my daughter, I’ll bloody swing for you.’
Prudence nodded. ‘They will need a double gibbet. I, too, am prepared to swing in order to save Sally. I imagine that the Marchants and the Heilbergs have a similar opinion. Sally belongs to all of us, you see. We are all taking care of her. We are all making sure that she gets the best of everything. You are not on the list, Andrew.’ She took Lottie’s arm. ‘Shall we go?’
‘Aye.’ Without a backward glance, Lottie left her husband and showed no emotion until she was seated in the car.
‘Don’t cry,’ said Prudence.
‘I’m not crying,’ replied Lottie. ‘It’s just the relief leaking out of me.’
Sally Crumpsall entered the Pack Horse Inn through the side entrance on Nelson Square. People were going in and out of the education offices or scurrying about with shopping bags, while a man on the corner was pointing out a hat in the window of a gentleman’s outfitter’s. An assistant stood beside him, the white tape measure around his neck betraying his status. Sally looked at the everyday scene, smiled when a furious attendant chased a lad out of the public toilets. ‘Yer not supposed fer t’play marbles in yon,’ roared the man as he waved his long-handled mop at the miscreant. ‘Them is conveniences, not playgrounds.’ A few years ago, Red Trubshaw might have been up to that sort of trick.
She pushed the inner door, went inside. A man at the reception desk looked up. ‘Yes, miss?’
Sally undid her coat, smoothed her hair, straightened the collar of her blouse. ‘I’m here to see Mrs Crumpsall,’ she informed him. ‘Only she might be Mrs Worthington. I mean . . . I mean Mrs Westford.’ Her cheeks glowed with embarrassment. Had she mentioned Kerrigan, her mother would have had four names to choose from. Determinedly, she stood her ground without biting her nails. She had given up biting her nails, even when standing in a strange place without knowing her own mother’s name.
Unaffected by Sally’s disquiet, the seasoned clerk pored over the guest register, pinpointed a room. He was used to this sort of thing. The old saying ‘there’s nowt as queer as folk’ was verified daily in the hotel trade.
Sally thanked him, followed his directions up the thickly carpeted stairs. Outside in the square, normal things were still happening. Men were buying hats, people were carrying home their groceries, the buses were running along nearby Bradshawgate. But meeting a mother after seven years was not commonplace. She was scared and a little bit uneasy in her stomach.
Outside the room, she paused, her heart beating wildly. It occurred to her that she would have preferred to meet a total stranger. At her interview for Bolton School, she had been confronted by all kinds of people, some of whom had been terrifyingly clever. She had been faced by a headmistress, a bursar and the head of first year in the space of half an hour. Even the caretaker had been well-spoken and smart with his navy-blue overalls and slicked-back hair.
Sally recoiled from the door behind which her mother waited, then leaned against the opposite wall. She remembered. She remembered hunger, dirt, the sound of her father’s laboured breathing. A basket had hung outside on a rope, and the neighbours had left bits of food for her. Many times, she had been spanked by her mother. At school she had been ignored because of filthy clothes and nits in her hair. Miss Lever had been kind. She worked in Paradise now, that lovely teacher.
What could she say to the woman at the other side of this door? Granny Ivy had made Sally come here alone. ‘You’re fourteen now, nearly a young woman. Lottie’s your mam, love. Just go and see her. Just go and talk to her. You don’t need nobody to hold your hand, not any more.’
She did, though. Standing here trying not to bite her thumbnail, she was suddenly about five years old. Tears and laughter were both only just beneath the surface of her open-pored skin, because her emotions were tangled and raw. Mam. She was going to see her mam who had run off with an American, her mam who had come back and married . . . him.
A maid clattered along the corridor, mops and buckets rattling in a deep-sided cart. ‘You all reet, lass?’
‘Er . . . yes.’
‘Are you lost?’
‘No.’
The cleaner put her turbaned head on one side. ‘Nowt’s as bad as you think it’s going fer t’ be. Mind, nowt’s as good as you think, neither. Get it over with, flower. Whatever’s mithering you, get it finished and done with, then you can put a laugh back in yon bonny eyes.’
Sally tapped at the door, smiled weakly in response to the maid’s wink.
Lottie, who had been standing only inches away, was relieved when she could open the door. For what had seemed like ages, the girl had hung back in the corridor. In spite of thick carpets, Lottie had heard every word, every rustle, every sigh. ‘Come in. You’ve no need to be frightened of me.’
Sally entered, stood perfectly still until Lottie came up behind her. When a hand touched her shoulder, Sally flinched automatically.
‘Sit down,’ said Lottie.
Sally obeyed, watched while her mother turned up the gas fire.
‘Cold,’ remarked Lottie.
‘Yes.’
‘Mind, New York were worse. They had to dig their way out of their houses some days. Shall I send for some tea and scones?’
‘Not for me. I’ve to go soon.’
‘Oh.’ Lottie sank into the chair opposite her daughter’s. For this occasion, Lottie had spent quite a bit of her savings on a ‘quiet’ frock, some good shoes and a hairdo that made her look human. ‘You’re a very pretty girl,’ she said.
Sally blushed. ‘Thank you.’
‘Clever, too, from what I’ve heard. What are you going to be?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
The older woman leaned back, tried to achieve some comfort by placing a cushion in the small of her spine. ‘I’ve left the queer feller. He only wanted me to get you back so’s your grandma would suffer. I’ve never had much time for Ivy, but I weren’t going to let him use me. He’s used folk all his life, has Worthington. Any road, he can do his own dirty work.’
Sally finally managed to look into her mother’s eyes. ‘Why did you come back?’
Lottie shrugged. ‘Because things didn’t work out for me. The chap I followed over there were another rum bugger. When the private detective found me and told me how Worthington wanted to send me the fare home, I jumped at it. And here I am. I’ve a few bob, not much, like, only Mrs Spencer’s paying the hotel bill. I suppose I’d better start looking for a job and somewhere to live.’
Sally straightened, plucked at her meagre store of courage. ‘You left my dad to die, Mother. And you left me, too. Why?’
A few beats of time passed while several emotions surfaced to wage war on Lottie’s unpretty face. ‘Because I’m selfish, Sally. Because I’ve always grabbed at chances.’
‘You didn’t love me.’
Lottie studied her hands for a moment. ‘No, I didn’t.’
The ensuing silence was punctuated by the sound of a bus rattling along Bradshawgate.
Sally chewed her lip, kept her hands away from her mouth. ‘Why didn’t you love me?’ So many whys, she thought. Enough whys to stretch across the Atlantic . . .
Lottie sniffed. ‘I don’t know. And that is the God’s honest truth. You were puny and you moaned a lot as a baby. Then you wanted things, needed things. I weren’t ready for none of that, see. And I’d no road of knowing how to go about being a mam.’ She paused, scratched her head, then remembered the posh hairdo. ‘Me and me sisters used to beg down at Bolton Market. Folk gave us pennies and bits of fruit. We’d no shoes. You could have soled and heeled our feet and we’d have felt nowt, ’cos the skin went hard with all that barefoot traipsing. She were never in. She were always going here and there.’
‘Your mother?’
Lottie inclined her head. ‘Aye, she were a case, me mam. She’d more blokes than you’ve had hot dinners.’
Sally’s hot dinners had started to arrive with regularity only after this woman had departed for foreign soil. ‘I don’t remember being fed regularly,’ she said quietly. ‘Until after you were gone. Uncle Tom bought my uniform. I went to school in lovely new clothes and had a meal with Granny Ivy when I got home. Dad died a couple of days later. Then Gran brought me up with the help of Uncle Tom, Maureen and the Heilbergs. I was lucky to have so many friends.’