He could be sure of nothing and he and Emmy both knew it. “Where is it?”
“Near Covent Garden, I think.”
“And there were others?”
“Others?” He blinked, wide-eyed.
“Others in the basement? Was she with someone?”
He blinked again. “Oh, aye, there were other victims, I hear. A dozen or so.”
“And they all came here?”
The man was trying to piece together why Emmy was asking so many questions. He stared at her. “No. Not all.”
“Just the ones no one came for,” Emmy finished for him.
He half nodded, embarrassed for her, possibly.
“We have what she was found with,” he said. “Her handbag and such. Those haven’t been stored away yet. Hold on.”
He disappeared into the kitchen and Emmy heard him speaking to a woman.
The man told her whose effects Emmy was after and the woman asked who wanted them.
“It’s the deceased’s daughter.”
“Daughter?” The woman sounded surprised. Emmy’s pulse quickened as the woman appeared in the doorway, her brow furrowed.
“Are you Anne Downtree’s daughter?” the woman asked as she approached Emmy.
Emmy felt a pulsing instinct to run.
“I am.” She swallowed the rising alarm.
“Your foster mother already got the telegram and brought you here?”
A second ripple of fear coursed through her. “Y-yes.”
The woman looked past Emmy to the door she’d come through. “We weren’t told you’d be coming today. I’m sorry to tell you that I could not have released your mother’s body to your foster mother even if I had wanted to. Is that what she was thinking? Is she outside waiting for you?”
Emmy had to get away.
But she had to pretend as if she didn’t.
“She is,” Emmy said slowly.
The woman frowned as if she’d been insulted. “And she sent you in here alone? Of all the—” She slammed the ledger shut and began to stride toward the door.
Emmy moved toward the woman, blocking her path.
“Please. I—I asked to come in alone. I wanted to see her on my own. My foster mother wanted to come in with me but I begged her not to.”
The woman’s disdain melted into something more like compassion.
“She’s waiting for me at the chemist,” Emmy continued. “My little sister has . . . She has asthma. We needed medicine. I’ll go get her.”
Emmy turned before either one could offer to accompany her. She strode toward the door as unhurriedly as she dared, without Mum’s handbag or whatever else she had on her when her body was found.
As soon as she was outside and around the corner, Emmy ran as fast as her legs could carry her.
Tears crept to the corners of her eyes as she sprinted down the street but Emmy savagely rubbed them away. After several blocks, and when her lungs were burning, she slowed to a walk, looking behind to make sure no one was coming after her.
So Charlotte had been sent a telegram that Mum had died. Would they come looking for her? Emmy wasn’t sure. Would the woman at the morgue assume that once Emmy told her foster mother that Mum had already been buried, they would opt for the first train out of hellish London? She would, wouldn’t she?
Even so, Emmy could not continue to stay at the flat, not now that she had been seen. Besides, there was no running water, electricity, gas, or food. She had to make other arrangements, but what?
Emmy had passed homeless shelters on the way back to Whitechapel, but whenever she had neared one of them, she smelled the fetid odor of unwashed bodies and makeshift latrines. She had no desire to stay in one. She could not go back to Mrs. Billingsley’s. The widow and her staff all knew how old Emmy was. They would contact social services.
Perhaps, though, Mrs. Billingsley could be persuaded to help her find Julia. If Emmy begged her? The woman had money. Apparently Mum had believed money was needed to do what the police could not or would not.
But would Mrs. Billingsley do that?
Emmy could not chance it.
She could go to no one that she knew; no classmate from school, or even a classmate’s family. She had to be eighteen-year-old Emmeline: a woman who did not yet exist in the eyes of anyone who knew her.
But where else could she go?
And then Emmy thought of Mrs. Crofton. Could Emmy convince her to let her stay with her? Emmy had missed the opportunity to become Graham’s apprentice but perhaps Mrs. Crofton would allow Emmy to stay with her while Emmy looked for Julia. Emmy would promise her that when she found her sister, she would return to Charlotte’s and she and Julia would stay in Stow for the remainder of the war, as they were supposed to have done. Yes, Emmy would do that. She would again have her brides box. She would find some way to regain the opportunity she had lost. Emmy would bring Julia with her back to London when the war ended. Perhaps Mrs. Crofton would allow her and Julia to board with her. Mrs. Crofton had had a daughter once, and she was fond of Emmy because of that. Emmy could tell that she was. She could pay for their room and board by working at the shop. And at night she would work on her gowns. Perhaps after the war, Mr. Dabney would give Emmy another chance. Emmy could still find a way to make Mum proud of her. Surely God allowed a dead mother glances from heaven at the children she had been torn from. . . .
Yes.
But Emmy didn’t know where Mrs. Crofton lived.
Hoping the shop had not been bombed, she decided to make her way to Primrose Bridal. She still had the back door key. She would wait for Mrs. Crofton there or poke about her desk, looking for the woman’s home address. Surely Mrs. Crofton would understand the need to do such a bold thing.
Emmy quickened her steps, impatient to take what she needed out of the flat and get to the bridal shop.
She arrived back home as the sun dipped low in the sky. Emmy pulled a travel bag from Mum’s wardrobe and added to it the contents of her mother’s top bureau drawer, which included her stockings, a nightgown, a felt-lined jewelry box, and a few trinkets. She also stuffed inside three of her mother’s dresses, a pair of her slacks, gloves, and a pair of heeled shoes. Next, Emmy went into her old bedroom and took the remaining undergarments she had left behind, a few of Julia’s clothes so that when she found her sister, she’d have clean clothes to wear. Back downstairs, Emmy grabbed her satchel and tossed what was left of Thea’s food stores inside—and the hammer—and ran out of the flat and down the deserted street.
The sun was nearly gone from the horizon.
Emmy doubled her speed, running haphazardly with her awkward load.
Let it be standing, Emmy whispered to the heavens. Let Primrose still be there.
She covered the four blocks to the shop in less than ten minutes, dodging debris and collecting stares all along the way. She reached the street and her heart plummeted to her knees. The building on the corner of the street was a smoking hulk.
But Primrose, four buildings down on the opposite side, still stood among the ruins.