Until my father had died, we’d had a good life. Not affluent, not by any means. But we’d lived well enough. He was a clerk, working for a firm of solicitors, and my mother had been a tailoress and after I came along she took in mending and made dresses from home. They were so proud of me when I got my job as a schoolteacher. I thought my father would burst.
But just two years later, he was gone and so was all our money – thanks to his gambling habit. A habit he’d kept secret from my mother and me, but which had left us with debts to pay. Faced with poverty, we’d had to move to this house – I looked round as I dried myself off with a thin towel – this cramped two-up, two-down, where we could hear everything the neighbours said and did, and which my mother hated. It was our lack of options, as two women with no man providing for us, while clearing up the mess that he’d left behind, and my rage over that helplessness, that had led me to the women’s suffrage movement. And the friends I’d made there had become my family while my mother grew ever more distant.
With heavy legs, I climbed the stairs to my room. Mother’s door was firmly shut, so I didn’t call goodnight. Instead I simply pulled my nightgown on over my head and slid beneath my sheets, ready for sleep.
Tomorrow, I thought, I would speak to Mother and clear the air. I would explain what Mrs Pankhurst and the other women were trying to do and make her understand how important it was. How vital it was that women like me and Mother had some agency over our own lives, and how allowing us to vote was just the start of that.
I reached down into my bag and felt about for the battered old notebook I wrote in. I would start by writing her a letter, I thought. I just needed to get her to listen …
* * *
I woke with a start a clear twelve hours later, my notebook still on my lap with just “Dear Mother” written at the top of the page, to the sound of the front door closing and the murmur of voices.
Sitting up in bed, I strained my ears to hear. It sounded like Mrs Williams, the headmistress of the school I taught in. But it was Saturday, and I’d been planning to visit her myself later to explain I was back and ask her for my job back.
Why was she here?
Quickly, I threw on a dress and shawl and twisted my plaited hair up on the back of my head, then as quietly as I could, I tiptoed down the stairs and sat at the bottom, to hear what was being said.
‘I’ll wake her,’ Mother said. ‘We can’t leave you waiting.’
‘She must be very tired after her …’ Mrs Williams tailed off.
‘Well, yes,’ said Mother awkwardly.
I felt like shouting: ‘Prison! I am tired because I have been in prison for six weeks and I couldn’t sleep.’ But I resisted. An outburst like that would hardly help the situation. And I feared it needed help because the only reason I could imagine for Mrs Williams arriving on our doorstep on a Saturday morning was not good.
Slowly, I stood up and made my way into the lounge.
‘Good morning, Mother,’ I said. ‘Mrs Williams.’
Mother stood up. She was twisting a handkerchief in her hands, winding it round her prominent knuckles. ‘I will make tea.’
Alone with Mrs Williams, I sat down on the edge of a chair. ‘What brings you here so early?’
Mrs Williams gave me a disbelieving glance. ‘You don’t know?’
‘I was hoping I might be mistaken.’
She shook her head. ‘I came to tell you we can no longer employ you at Trinity School,’ she said.
I closed my eyes. ‘Mrs Williams,’ I began. ‘Could I just explain …’
‘I’m afraid not.’ She stood up. ‘We cannot employ criminals at our school.’
‘I’m not a criminal,’ I said. ‘I was a political prisoner.’
She looked at me in disdain. ‘You engaged in a criminal act.’
‘I smashed a window.’
‘And that is illegal.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘Your employment is terminated,’ she said. ‘And I feel I must tell you that you will be similarly unwelcome at every school in London.’
‘Surely not every school?’ I said, sulky like one of my pupils.
‘Every school,’ Mrs Williams said. ‘Every one.’ She picked up her shawl and glared at me. ‘Please thank your mother for the tea but I have to be on my way.’
She spun round and stalked out of the room as I sank back against the chair. Why did I cheek her? Why didn’t I throw myself on her mercy, apologise, and beg for my job?
A creaky floorboard made me look up. Mother was standing there, her face drawn. She had dark circles under her eyes and I felt a flash of guilt that I’d caused her more pain.
‘You have to leave,’ she said.
I stared at her.
‘Now,’ she continued. ‘I can let your room out if you go. I can’t afford for you to be here. Not now you have no job.’
‘I’ll get another job.’
‘Not soon enough. No one will take a chance on you. Not now. Not after this. It could take months before you’re earning again.’
My eyes were hot with tears. ‘Mother, no.’
‘Esther,’ she said. ‘I’ve found a lodger already.’
‘Where will I go?’
She looked down at me and suddenly her sad face seemed full of menace. ‘I don’t know, Esther,’ she said. ‘And I don’t much care.’
It took just minutes for me to pack. I had so few belongings nowadays that my whole life fitted into a carpetbag.
I went downstairs, my bag thumping against the walls, and found Mother in the kitchen, washing up.
‘I’m going now,’ I said.
‘Goodbye.’ She didn’t look at me.
‘Do you want me to send word of my new address?’
She shrugged. ‘Whatever you see fit.’
Without another word – what else was there to say? – I turned and, with my shoulders hunched, I left the house. I walked a little way along the street and then stopped. I was at a loss. I had no idea where to go. Not even which direction to walk in.
I supposed I should try to find a job first and then a room? Or would it make more sense to find a room first? I had picked up a few coins from my drawer at home, but it wouldn’t go far. I wasn’t even sure it would be enough to cover any rent up front. Would landladies want rent up front? I had no idea.
Hauling my bag on to my shoulder, I wandered through the narrow streets of Wandsworth, unconsciously heading back towards Stockwell and the home where I’d grown up. Another family lived there now. A family with lots of children to fill the rooms where I’d played by myself as a child. A family with a mother who was loving and full of laughter – like mine had once been – and a father who really was the sort of man everyone believed him to be, and not secretly gambling away his family’s future.
I walked along the side of the park towards our old house. It wasn’t far from here that I’d