The next day the newspapers had been full with the names of the West End stars who had publicly demanded the vote, and when the manager of the theatre Sophy was presently working at tried to put pressure on her to withdraw from the League, she told him she was going to get more involved, if anything. She wasn’t surprised when her contract wasn’t renewed, neither was she concerned. Kane had negotiated an excellent part for her as the leading lady in one of the smaller but well-respected theatres, and the part – which kept clear of specific Suffrage party politics and concentrated on the generalised sexual inequalities of Edwardian society – was one she felt she could get her teeth into.
There was a two-week interval between finishing at the present theatre and taking up her part at the General, so on 2 January, the day after thousands of Britons over seventy years of age went to the Post Office to draw their first weekly pension of five shillings, Sophy set off for the north-east with Sadie at her side to keep her promise to Patience. She found she was immensely grateful for Sadie’s company; she hadn’t expected to feel so nervous about returning home. No, not home, she corrected herself for the umpteenth time as the train steamed its way through the bitterly cold countryside. London was her home now. Southwick was merely the place where she had been born and lived the first sixteen years of her life.
It got colder the further north they travelled, and it had just begun to snow and the darkening sky looked full of it as the train chuffed its way into Central Station. Sophy had been able to eat little on the journey, her stomach tied up in knots. She had left this town thirteen years ago, heartsore and determined never to return, and yet here she was.
She glanced at herself in the train window, her fingers nervously stroking the little silver ballerina brooch Miss Bainbridge had given her and which she wore always. Her grey suit was both expensive and tasteful, and with her fur coat, muff and hat, she looked every inch the wealthy gentlewoman, but that was just on the outside. Inside she felt like the bewildered, frightened young girl who had fled these shores. This, returning home – she didn’t check the word this time – was harder than she had expected it to be. She wished now she had accepted Kane’s suggestion that he accompany her. His solid support would have been a comfort.
She didn’t ask herself why she had refused his offer, she knew that only too well. There could be a chance – remote, maybe, but still a possibility nonetheless – that he might find out about her mother, her beginnings. And she wouldn’t be able to bear it if he looked at her differently. She now accepted that something had happened the morning she had gone unannounced to Kane’s house. It was then that she had been forced to think of him as a man, rather than her friend and one-time benefactor. She had felt disturbed at the time but she’d pushed her feelings to the back of her mind, having more – as she had put it to herself – important things to think about.
She had never asked him about his private life and would rather die than do so, but at the oddest moments since that morning she found herself imagining him with a woman – any woman – and when she did so, her feelings were plunged into a turmoil of which she was ashamed. Kane had always been so good to her, fatherly even, and she was sure he thought of her as something between a daughter or a fond niece – and a friend, of course. And she was further mortified that this had become increasingly irritating to her. She didn’t want any involvement with anyone on a romantic level, she was sure about that after the years of being trapped in a marriage that had been a mockery from the start, so why did it matter how Kane regarded her? It didn’t. Of course it didn’t. She was being ridiculous and perverse.
She’d imagined she would be able to see him in the way she once had when she’d agreed to his proposal that he become her agent. It would set their relationship on more of a business footing, she had argued to herself, and she had been thinking about employing an agent for some time. Some of the actresses she worked with had agents and some did not, but there was no doubt that a good agent was of considerable benefit to an actress’s career. And so she had been all for his suggestion. But it hadn’t helped. To be fair to Kane, he was still the kind, benevolent gentleman he’d always been, somewhat patriarchal and protective but he had been well brought up and was that way with all women. At times she sensed a reserve about him, but that had probably been there since she’d known him. Cat had called him enigmatic once, and she had been right. And yet when Patience had stayed with her and Kane had visited, he had seemed more relaxed with her cousin than he ever was with her. To her great chagrin, she had found she was jealous, jealous of dear Patience, and it was then she had told herself enough was enough.