Father Unknown (21 page)

‘Was Rosemary okay?’

‘A bit peeved.’ She grinned. ‘But she’s at the dance now, and she’s probably drunk again and forgotten all about it. I told her as soon as I’d got a flat of my own she could come up and join me.’

‘Colin chewed my ear off,’ Will admitted ruefully. ‘He pointed out I’d only known you five minutes and for all I knew you could be pregnant and only asking to come so I’ll have to look after you.’

That made Josie smart, but she held her dress tight to her stomach. ‘Does it look like I’m pregnant?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You strike me as being too sensible for that.’

‘I am. And I don’t need you or anyone else to look after me,’ she said indignantly. ‘When we get to London you can just drop me off somewhere if you like.’

His face softened and he came forward and kissed her. ‘I’m glad you’ve come,’ he said. ‘And I certainly won’t drop you off anywhere. I want you with me.’

It was a long, long drive to London, but Josie dozed in the back seat and let the men talk to each other. She had felt Colin’s annoyance when he came out of the hotel to find her there, so she’d said as little as possible, hoping that way he’d come round.

As they drove through Bristol, Will pointed out a beautiful bridge high up in the sky lit by hundreds of electric lights. He said it was the Clifton Suspension Bridge. That gave her a jolt, for Clifton was where Ellen was. She’d mentioned the bridge and the woods on the other side of the Avon Gorge in one of her letters.

Thinking about Ellen and how she’d left home made Josie realize that what she’d done was not only reckless but stupid. She’d thought she’d worked everything out, but in reality she hadn’t even considered the most basic things.

When she didn’t arrive home the following night, her father would drive the truck into Falmouth to find her. When he heard from Mr and Mrs Parks that she’d gone home the previous evening, he might jump to the conclusion she’d been snatched or even murdered.

All at once she was frightened. Rosemary was bound to tell him about Will and Colin. If Dad called the police and they went round to the hotel they’d been staying at, they might pass on the men’s address in London.

She sat bolt upright in the seat, wondering what to do. Colin was driving now, Will half asleep in the passenger seat. She could tell them the truth of course, but Colin had the hump already about her being with them and he would be really angry if she asked him to turn round and drive back. But then she didn’t want to go back; she wanted to go to London.

She slumped down again in the seat, trying to think logically. If the police traced Will he might get into trouble for taking an under-age girl away. So she would have to get away from him.

Reminding herself that no one would know she was missing until around ten or eleven the following night, she knew she was safe enough for now. She could go to Will’s flat, have a sleep, then make some excuse to leave later in the day.

Her natural optimism began to come back as she remembered she still had the ten-pound note she’d got for her birthday. That would be enough to find a room and get by until she got a job, and she’d post a card to her parents saying she was fine and not to worry about her.

Yet all the same she was sad she couldn’t stay with Will. He seemed to know everything, and she didn’t much like the idea of being all alone in a city she didn’t know.

‘I warned you it was a tip,’ Will said as he opened a door on the second floor and led her into his flat.

It was four in the morning and still dark, and the light he flicked on immediately showed up clothes strewn over chairs, and unwashed plates and cups on a coffee table.

‘It’s not that bad,’ Josie said quite truthfully. It looked interesting to her, for there was a kind of easel set up by the window with all kinds of drawing equipment, and a desk laden with books and magazines. It had exactly the kind of style she imagined a bachelor pad in London would have: simple modern furniture, white walls and lots of fashionable black and grey.

‘I’ve only got one bedroom, but the couch pulls out into a bed,’ Will said, yawning as he took off his jacket. ‘I’d offer to sleep on it, but the sheets on my bed need changing and I’m too tired for that right now. The bathroom’s here.’ He pushed at the door to his left. ‘The kitchen and the bedroom.’ He indicated doors to the right and left of the main room.

Josie put her case down. She saw no point in exploring for she didn’t intend to stay long. ‘You must be exhausted with all that driving, do go to bed, Will.’

He gave her a grateful look and rubbed his eyes. ‘I’ll just pull out the bed for you. Help yourself to tea or coffee. I’ve got an appointment this afternoon so I’ll set my alarm for one. Will you be all right while I’m gone? I should be back by five and we can go out and get something to eat.’

‘Don’t you worry about me, I’ll be fine,’ she said, feeling anything but fine. She had a strong feeling he was regretting bringing her here. Perhaps he’d even guessed now that she was far younger than seventeen.

For a second or two she was tempted to tell him the truth. It didn’t seem fair that possibly late tonight or early tomorrow morning he’d have police banging on his door. Was it a criminal offence to take an under-age girl away from her home?

But Will pulled out the couch, and brought her a couple of blankets and sheets. Then he said goodnight and went into his bedroom, closing the door behind him, without even trying to kiss her.

Josie took off her jeans and blouse, hung them over the back of a chair and slipped her pyjamas on over her underwear. She didn’t think she could sleep, and she wondered why Will had made no attempt to kiss her.

But the couch made a surprisingly comfortable bed, far better than her one at home, and while she was wondering whether Will’s chilliness was due to anxiety or tiredness, she must have fallen asleep. She was woken by a dull, droning sound, and it was a minute or two before she realized it was only traffic outside.

It was daylight now, and the clock on a bookcase said it was half past eleven. She got up and went over to the window, pushing back the curtains.

Later that day she was to discover that Will’s flat was in Bayswater Road, a main road that ran through Notting Hill to Oxford Street. But that first view of London was a lovely surprise, for though the road was very busy with traffic, on the other side was a huge park.

She had noticed very little as they arrived, only that the flat was up two flights of stairs and the lights kept going out. Will had dropped Colin off in a place he called Hammersmith, but it hadn’t been more than fifteen minutes from here.

Across the street there were lots of paintings hung on the park railings. She supposed it must be a kind of exhibition as dozens of people were walking along looking at them. A big red London bus, exactly like the ones she’d seen in pictures and films, came by, and she felt a shiver of excitement. She was here at last, and even if it hadn’t worked out quite as she used to plan it, she’d done it now and she was going to make the best of it.

An hour later she was washed and dressed in the clothes she’d worn the previous night. She had washed up all the plates and cups, tidied the kitchen and lounge and folded the bed back into a couch.

A little prying showed that Will was very organized – there was food in his cupboards and refrigerator and he even had some cleaner for the bath and toilet. On a pinboard by his desk were several photographs of girls. One looked a bit like him and Josie thought it was probably his sister. She suspected the others were girlfriends. A notebook by the phone contained hundreds of numbers, and a black diary beside it proved he was speaking the truth when he’d said he had an appointment today. She felt a pang of real sadness that she couldn’t hang on to have a meal with him tonight, or even see him again. If she hadn’t been so bull-headed, just stayed at home, got that job in the shipping office, kept in touch by letter or phone and come up here later in the year, he could have been hers for keeps.

‘You angel, you’ve tidied up,’ Will said as he came out of his bedroom just after one, his hair all tousled and a dark shadow on his chin. ‘Couldn’t you sleep?’

‘I did for a while,’ she said, ‘but the traffic woke me. I’ve just put the kettle on, would you like some tea?’

‘Coffee please, two sugars. I’ll just nip in and shave. I’m a bit pushed for time.’

He emerged from the bathroom some ten minutes later looking exactly how he had when they first met, only his face was a little browner from the day on the beach. He gulped down the coffee and looked anxiously at his watch.

‘There’s a spare key if you want to go over to the park,’ he said, pointing to a set of keys hanging by the door. ‘Don’t go too far and get lost, jot down the address and phone number before you go out, just in case. Oh, there’s a London map on the bookcase if you want to work out where you are. Help yourself to food, won’t you?’

‘Are you sorry you brought me?’ she asked, unable to resist probing.

His face softened. ‘No, of course not. But we need to discuss things properly when I get back. I’ll be home around five I expect.’

She went over to him and raised her face expectantly for a kiss. His lips brushed against hers, but it couldn’t be called a real kiss. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said, snatching up a large slim file which was leaning against the wall. ‘I’ll see you later.’

At ten that same night Josie was in very different surroundings – a dismal little attic room on the top floor of a house in a place called Ladbroke Grove – and she was crying.

She had left Will’s flat full of excitement and gone over to the park where she sat and studied the map of London. Having seen the Tube station called Queensway just a little further down the road, she worked out exactly where she was.

Stopping a couple of girls who looked only a little older than her, she asked them where the best place was to find a flat, and how she should go about it. They said the
Evening Standard
newspaper was the best bet, but that didn’t come out on Sundays. She chatted to them for a while and discovered that the Bayswater area they were in was very expensive, even one room could cost as much as twelve to fifteen pounds a week. They suggested she walked along to Notting Hill and looked at adverts in shop windows because she might find somewhere cheaper. They asked if she had a job, and when she said she had only just arrived here and would have to look for one, they recommended she went to one of the employment agencies in Oxford Street on Monday. They were so friendly and nice that Josie thought everyone would be like them, but a few hours later, with blisters on her feet, she had discovered this wasn’t so.

She found a shop window with adverts and jotted them all down, and then she began phoning them. Few people even answered the phone and those who did seemed impossibly snooty, asking her all sorts of questions about what sort of job she had and if she had a previous landlord’s and bank reference.

Two out of fifteen of the people she phoned said she could call round, and gave her the address, but as soon as she got to the front door, they looked her up and down and said the room had already been let. As they couldn’t really have let it so quickly she had to assume that her being so young put them off.

Another thing that surprised her was how quickly the area called Notting Hill changed from smart to seedy. Some roads were lovely, tree-lined with beautiful houses, but then she’d turn the corner and there were overflowing dustbins and paint peeling off front doors. The further she walked away from Notting Hill, the seedier it became, and soon she wasn’t seeing neatly typed advertisements in shop windows, but hastily scrawled ones that suggested the owners wouldn’t be so fussy.

She had three more invitations to go round and view a room. The first one was so horrible and dirty she backed out with an excuse she had to see somewhere else. In the second, a grubby little man with a bald head touched her bottom as she went up the stairs in front of him and frightened the living daylights out of her. The third house seemed entirely occupied by black people, a group of them sitting on the wall outside. She had only seen two black people in her life before, and that was from a distance, and she was so unnerved she walked straight on past the house, far too nervous even to knock at the door.

Finally she ended up in Ladbroke Grove. It was horrible. Lots of dirty children were playing in the streets, men were lying on patches of bare ground drinking, and there were so many black people that it was as though she was in a foreign country. Even the shops had a sort of pall of dirt hanging over them. She saw an overhead railway ahead of her, but by then she was too tired even to attempt to go somewhere nicer and she sat down on a low wall and began to cry.

Her nervousness of black people abated when a big black lady in a pink floral dress came up to her and asked why she was crying. She had a nice face, soft, sad eyes and a singsong sort of voice. Something about her made Josie pluck up her courage to explain her predicament, and the woman took her into a café, bought her a cup of tea and a sticky bun and tried to persuade her to go home to her mother.

‘London ain’t no place for little girls on their own,’ she said, patting Josie’s hand in a motherly way. ‘All they do’s get themselves into trouble.’

Josie said that she couldn’t go home now, and asked if she had any idea where she could get a room, to tide her over until she found a job.

That was how she got this room, right up in an attic in a street called Westbourne Park Road. The lady, who introduced herself as ‘Fee’, knew the landlord, Mr Sharman, and took Josie round to see him. He agreed to let her have the room for four pounds a week, and because Fee had introduced them he wouldn’t ask for any deposit.

Josie didn’t really understand what he meant by a deposit, but the fact he didn’t want one suggested he was a kind man. So she paid over the four pounds and he gave her the keys.

Yet it was Fee’s sweetness that really affected Josie. As they’d walked round here Fee told her a little about herself. She said she and her husband had come from Trinidad ten years ago with high expectations of a better life. But even though her husband now worked as a porter in a hospital, they and their three children had to live in one room. She said people were mean to black people, they made them pay higher rent and gave them all the worst jobs.