Freda made her way back towards the familiarity of Covent Garden, hoping she might be able to beg an apple off one of the stallholders.
Without realizing, she found herself on Frith Street, the home of the Vanbrugh Academy of Dance. As she neared the dance school her legs began to wobble and her heart to pound. The idea of a chance encounter with Miss Sherbourne was too much. Miss Sherbourne had not had her best interests at heart. How many other girls had she sent to “audition” at the Adelphi, or indeed any theatre? Freda turned and fled.
In Bow Street she passed the huge police station that took up half the street opposite the Royal Opera House. She should report Florence’s disappearance. A policeman in uniform was loitering nearby, smoking a cigarette in a rather shifty way, as if he shouldn’t be. It gave him a criminal air. Freda had never spoken to a member of the force before and wasn’t sure how you addressed one. Eventually she approached, rather nervously, and said, “Excuse me, sir?”
“Yes?” he snapped.
She persisted, despite his bad manners. “A friend of mine has gone missing and I wondered if I should tell someone. In case something’s happened to her.”
“Happened?” he said.
“Well, the day before yesterday I think she got into a car.”
“People get in cars all the time.”
“But she doesn’t know anyone in London.”
“How do you know—?” But then his eye seemed to be caught by the sight of someone leaving the police station and he hastily cupped his cigarette in one hand and with the other gave a little salute and said, “Sir,” to someone who was hurrying past.
“Oakes,” the man muttered in acknowledgement as he passed. He glanced back and, pausing in his stride, he looked at Freda. She felt inspected.
“Everything all right here, Sergeant?” he asked, turning to the policeman, who said, “Yes, sir, just a tart looking for business.”
“From a policeman in uniform outside Bow Street police station?”
Oakes laughed. “They’re brazen, Chief Inspector.”
The man, the Chief Inspector, set off again, and again he hesitated before returning and, after rummaging in his pocket, came up with a half-crown. Handing it to Freda, he said, “Get yourself a hot meal.” He marched off before she could even say thank you.
Freda’s spirits had been lifted by the kind half-crown and she was already dreaming about a chop or a pie when the sergeant snatched the coin out of her fingers. “You can forget that,” he said. Without thinking, she lunged after the coin, but he produced a pair of handcuffs and, laughing again, said, “Shall I arrest you?” Freda shook her head (meek, not cheek, she reminded herself) and the policeman said, “But if you want to earn money, then I know a way. Do you? Want to earn money?”
Freda had always known that she had a price waiting to be put on her own head, but she hadn’t been expecting to have to pay it quite so soon.
* * *
—
Florence! Freda was certain it was her! She had been traipsing around Green Park with no goal other than finding a drinking fountain—it was a toss-up to see if she would die of thirst or hunger first—when she spotted Florence. Although she could only see her from the back, she was sure it was her—the broad, rather stooped shoulders, the plodding walk, the crocheted beret. “Florence!” she bellowed. (“Project your voice!” she heard the director of A Midsummer Night’s Dream say in her head.)
Again, “Florence!” And again. People were looking at Freda but she didn’t care. They would have heard her at the back of the stalls, in the gods, too, but it was to no avail. The sturdy figure plodded on. One more “Florence!” at the top of her lungs just in case. Her voice was hoarse, she had drunk nothing since the cup of tea in the café in Neal Street this morning.
She broke into a run, the suitcase banging against her legs, but it was no good. Freda thought she was making a little ground, but then she came across some boys larking about and they started to run alongside her, jostling her, making fun of her, and when she wouldn’t stop and talk, one of them put his foot out and sent her flying. They ran off, laughing, leaving her to nurse a badly bruised knee. She bit her lip to stop her tears. She would not cry.
As she clambered to her feet, another elderly gentleman appeared by her side—London seemed to be full of them—offering to assist her, but she shook him off. Who knew what his intentions were?
There was no sign of Florence. Freda doubted now that it had ever been her. Hunger must have fed her imagination. Was there no bottom to the depths that despair could take her to?
* * *
—
After leaving Green Park, Freda had spent several more purposeless hours wandering around Soho, dodging unwanted attention. At last, thank goodness, a large clock hanging above a jeweller’s told her that it was time.
She cast off her day clothes in a public convenience on Piccadilly, perching her suitcase on the toilet lid and taking out her dancing shoes and her favourite frock. It had grown small for her, even though she had lost a lot of weight recently due to her enforced diet of penury. It was not a frock as such but her Peaseblossom costume from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She had loved the spangled green dress so much that she had quietly slipped it in her bag after the last night of the production. Minus the wings. They wouldn’t fit in the bag. She still missed them. Not theft, exactly—Mr. Birdwhistle’s wallet and the cherry-red cardigan from the Knits notwithstanding, Freda was not given to thieving. No, it had been the siren call of beauty and was therefore excused.
Hail, mortal! Freda had extemporized the exclamation mark and said her only line so resoundingly that you could hear it all the way at the back of the stalls in the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, or so Florence had reported. Freda had given her two tickets and she had brought her mother along. “Very pleasant,” Mrs. Ingram said afterwards, which was damning with faint praise—something Duncan used to say.
Where was Florence? She had disappeared as mysteriously as she had appeared on the doorstep of the convent as a baby. Absurd though it seemed, Freda couldn’t shake the strange feeling that Florence had returned to wherever she had come from. She should have been bolder, she should have pushed her way into the police station in Bow Street and given them Florence’s details. If she saw the nice policeman who had given her the half-crown (she still felt the pain of its loss), perhaps she could ask him to help.
When they first arrived in London, Freda and Florence had spent their evenings companionably wandering the exotic streets of Soho, marvelling at the variety of people and shops and restaurants. It was not just like being in a foreign country, it was like being in a hundred foreign countries at once. To their surprise, they had discovered that in the capital people seemed to do nothing but drink and dance as though they were possessed. It was as if one huge, mad party was cranked up after dark beneath the pavements of the capital, only to fade away with the dawn.
“Like fairyland,” Florence had said. Florence was very au fait with fairy lore, and she had a lovely illustrated book of Grimms’ tales that Freda often used to leaf through for the pictures. Fanciful Florence had once claimed to have seen fairies in her garden, hiding in the laurels. Perhaps she should have her eyes tested, Freda suggested.