‘How did you get hold of the key?’
There was a moment’s pause before Alice answered.
‘Miss Lees sometimes uses her side door. She locks the main door – but she leaves the key in. I slid a piece of paper under the door, then pushed out the key from the outside. It fell onto the paper and I then pulled the paper under the door with the key on it.’
‘Very clever,’ Ethel said coldly. ‘Where did you find out about that?’
Alice’s voice was low. ‘I read it in a book.’
Sighing, Ethel looked down. ‘Go back to bed.’
‘But –’
‘Go back to bed, Alice!’ she repeated, and watched as the girl left the room.
For a long time Ethel sat in her chair and listened to the clock ticking, and the water pipes clanking as someone flushed a cistern upstairs. She thought about Alice and worried. The girl was too reckless. It was madness to think of breaking in to look at her records!
Then suddenly Ethel remembered that the bottle of cough linctus that she’d taken to use as a cosh was still up in the principal’s office. Startled, she sat bold upright. If Clare Lees found it she would know that Ethel had been there. She wouldn’t know about Alice, because Ethel would never tell her, but she would have to explain what she had been doing in the principal’s office in the middle of the night.
Ethel felt faint with anxiety. She would be sacked, the money finished, and no references. Her reputation would be ruined … There was only one thing for it, she had to get the bottle back. Hurriedly she got to her feet, went back up the dim stairs and moved towards the principal’s office. Once there, she felt into her pocket and took out the key, unlocked the door and let herself in.
Moonlight shafted over the desk and along the floor. Ethel strained her eyes to see the bottle in the semidark. Finally she spotted it and grabbed it, moving quickly back to the door … Then she turned back. She paused, tempted. She looked at the desk. Her mouth dried, the moonlight falling over the wooden surface.
Get out, she told herself, get out now, before it’s too late. But she couldn’t. Suddenly she had to know what was in Alice’s file. Putting down the bottle again, Ethel ran her tongue over her dry lips and opened the drawer. Hurriedly she sifted through the A – Z listing, stopping on R. With shaking hands she lifted out the file on ALICE RIMMER.
She would be fired if she was caught. Out on her ear … Just put the file back, Ethel, she urged herself. Just put it back … But she couldn’t, and slowly opened the file. The moon shifted a little, throwing its helpful light over the paper as Ethel read the lines written on the first page. She reread them, and reeled, momentarily giddy. Then she slammed the file shut and turned.
On unsteady legs she walked to the door, clutching the bottle of linctus. Clumsily she relocked the door and then pushed the key underneath it as though it had fallen out of the lock. Holding tightly on to the banister rail she then moved down the stairs and back into her room. Once there Ethel Cummings fell into her chair and stared ahead of her.
Finally, she knew where Alice Rimmer came from. Knew who her parents were … A darkness settled over the room and over her heart. What she had read she wished she had never seen.
What she had read she would never forget.
Late the following afternoon Ethel came back to Netherlands for her next shift. She had not slept during the day and every enquiry of Gilbert’s was met with preoccupied distance. Each time she closed her eyes, Ethel saw the damning lines written in Alice’s file. Each time she opened her eyes, she saw the same words printed in headlines and snapping from newspaper stands.
Unusually quiet, she went back to work and then, finally, she sent for Alice. It took a while for the girl to arrive and during that time Ethel washed and rewashed several bandages which had never been used, just to keep herself busy.
Finally there was a soft rap at the door.
‘Come in, Alice.’
She walked in nervously and stood before Ethel, certain that she was about to be told that her nocturnal adventure had been reported to Clare Lees. A long moment passed, and then another. Alice finally looked at Ethel, concerned.
‘Are you all right?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ Ethel replied more sharply than she meant. ‘I wanted to have a word with you.’
How would she say it? How could she phrase the next lines? She paused, studied Alice and felt all the old affection well up in her. Dear God, what good would be served by telling her? What purpose? She had been shattered by the news; what would it do to a wilful, excitable girl?
It would ruin her, Ethel realised. And in that moment she made her decision.
‘Alice, I thought about what you said last night.’ Ethel paused, considering her next words. ‘I realised that it was only natural that you wanted to know about your past and your parents. Well, I went back to the office last night –’
Alice’s eyes had widened. ‘What?’
‘Ssssh!’ Ethel cautioned her. ‘This is between us. No one else must ever know. Listen to me, Alice, I have something to tell you.’
The girl stared at her, hardly breathing.
‘I went back and I looked for your file,’ Ethel paused again. ‘I looked once and then again. There was no file. I’m sorry, but there was nothing to see.’
She could feel the hope leave Alice’s body, see her eyes dulling, her lips pale. There was nothing to see. Nothing.
Gently, Ethel put her arms around her. ‘There, there, luv, I had to tell you. I couldn’t leave you wondering, could I? Couldn’t leave you imagining all sorts.’ She held on to the fourteen-year-old, and lied. ‘I’m afraid no one can tell you anything, luv. Because there’s nothing to know.’
1927
The world had changed radically in the aftermath of the Great War. Outside the grim Netherlands Orphanage there were posters of women with their hair shingled, their hemlines raised. Some even wore make-up, and at the cinemas in Salford Mae West and Greta Garbo heralded in a new age of glamour. As did Charlie Chaplin, the little man taking on the big boys. Everything was changing, speeding up. In March the land speed record of over 200 miles per hour had been set and in May Lindbergh flew the Atlantic solo.
But at Netherlands Orphanage little had changed. The old regime was still intact, Clare Lees still the principal. She was badly stooped now, her dowager’s hump making her irritable, her voice shrill with the onset of old age and lost hopes. Evan Thomas had hung on too. He had thought his ship would have come in by now, but it appeared to have hit some unexpected rocks. Having been made deputy head several years earlier he was surprised to find himself still the deputy head, but he reckoned that he had come so far, it would be folly to give up now. After all, he was only thirty-six, and life still held promise.
Dolly Blake had also remained at Netherlands, but she had aged less phlegmatically, and now had a bitter expression about the mouth. Her ambitions had faltered and when time passed and she had looked close to being left on the shelf, she had decided that Andy was her best option. After all, nothing stopped her from seeing Evan Thomas after she was married.
Except Andy