The Silk Thief (24 page)

She wandered towards the more lightweight fabrics — the muslins, cottons, ginghams, calicoes and chintzes — and ran her hand over various bolts.

‘Do you want plain or patterned?’ Friday asked.

‘Oh, plain, probably.’

‘Don’t be so boring.’ Friday indicated a Turkey red floral calico. ‘What about this?’

‘It’s a bit bright.’

‘It is not. This, then. The China blue looks really good against your skin. And so does that red. Don’t be such a lily liver. Honestly, one day you’ll disappear comp—’

Sarah glanced over her shoulder to see what had caused Friday to stop talking — a very rare occurrence. Approaching was an extremely beautiful, big, brown-skinned girl wearing a smart black and silver-striped dress. Her chin was tattooed and she wore a comb of some sort in her hair.

The girl touched Friday’s hand. Sarah thought Friday looked like she might faint.

‘Mother is up at the counter,’ the girl said in a rush. ‘Tomorrow morning at your room. I will try to be there by ten.’ Then she turned on her heel and hurried back towards the rear of the shop, leaving Friday staring after her.

‘We have to go,’ Friday blurted, a spot of red blooming on each cheek. ‘But we can come back. Is that all right?’

‘Why?’ Sarah asked. ‘Who was that?’

‘Um.’ Friday panicked. What was she going to tell Sarah? ‘Come outside, just for ten minutes? Please?’

‘Only if you tell me what’s going on,’ Sarah grumbled, following Friday out onto George Street.

They collected Clifford and walked fifty yards up the road to lean against the Barracks wall, keeping an eye on the draper’s shop so Friday could see when Aria and Mahuika came out.

‘Well?’ Sarah prompted.

Friday sighed. Her palms were sweaty, and not just because it was hot. ‘Her name’s Aria. I met her the other day. Her father’s the one visiting Leo.’

Sarah said, ‘She’s very beautiful.’

Clifford growled at a woman walking past. Friday said nothing.

‘You fancy her, don’t you?’ Sarah asked.

‘No!’ Friday’s face heated up again and her skin prickled uncomfortably.

‘It’s a waste of time lying,’ Sarah said. ‘I pretty well worked it out a while ago.’

Friday opened her mouth to protest further, but why bother? Sarah knew — she could see it in her eyes. ‘God. How did you know?’

Sarah shrugged. ‘I’m not entirely sure. I don’t know the first thing about, well, girls who like girls. It’s just that you’ve never had anyone special. Anyone at all. But you’ve got a big heart, so I assumed it was because you couldn’t, not because you didn’t want someone. You could have had plenty of men as proper lovers, but you never have, so I suppose I eventually decided you must prefer women. And I did get the impression that you fancied Serafina.’

Her eyes burning, Friday struggled to swallow around the lump in her throat. ‘And you’re not … angry?’ From the corner of her eye she noted Mahuika and Aria emerge from the draper’s and walk off in the opposite direction.

‘Angry? Why would I be angry?’

‘Because I’m not normal,’ Friday said. ‘Because it’s wrong. Because I’m a tribade.’ Oh, her throat ached now.

Sarah took her hand. ‘You can call yourself what you like, but to me you’re just Friday. I don’t care who you fancy.’

As Friday wiped tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand, Sarah gave her a hug. Jealous, Clifford squeezed between them and sat on Sarah’s feet.

Friday shoved her off. ‘Does Harrie know?’

‘She’s never mentioned it, but I doubt it. You know how naive she is.’

‘She’ll be so shocked. Or disgusted.’ Friday could just imagine Harrie’s face when she found out.

‘Oh, she will not,’ Sarah said. ‘She loves you.’

Friday thought about that for a moment. It was nice knowing you were loved. ‘She does, doesn’t she? She loves you, too.’

‘Yes, I know. She was much nicer to me when we first met in Newgate than you were.’

‘Well, you were pretty awful.’

‘That’s true,’ Sarah agreed.

‘She’s held us together, hasn’t she? All of us, especially poor Rachel.’

‘Do you think that’s why she believes Rachel’s still here? Because she loved her so much and can’t bear to let her go?’

‘Christ knows,’ Friday said.

‘Because I loved Rachel, too,’ Sarah said, ‘and I’ve never seen her.’

So did I, Friday thought, and I can’t make up my mind whether she’s here or not. ‘God, poor Harrie. What’s she going to be like when she hears about what else Serafina saw?’

‘If it’s actually happened. It was only a prediction,’ Sarah reminded her.

‘You just don’t want it to be true,’ Friday said.

‘Of course I bloody well don’t. Do you?’

‘Hell, no.’

They stood there for several moments in unhappy contemplation.

At last Sarah asked, ‘So why did we have to rush out of the draper’s?’

‘Because Aria’s mother was in there. She’s taken against me. If she sees me, Aria won’t have a hope in hell of sneaking away and coming to visit me tomorrow. But I saw them come out a few minutes ago.’

‘Well, you be careful. Those people eat their enemies, you know.’

‘Do they?’ Friday’s stomach clenched slightly. ‘Jesus.’

‘That’s what I’ve heard.’

‘I wouldn’t put it past that bloody mother.’

‘Do you think we can go back in now? I might get the Turkey red after all,’ Sarah said, flinching as Clifford lifted her leg on the hem of Friday’s skirt.

‘And the China blue,’ Friday said. ‘What’s the matter? Ah, you little shite!’

With a deep, shuddering groan, Adam gave one final thrust then slowly subsided onto Sarah’s slender white back. He moved his hands from her rounded hips and, the muscles of his arms quivering, settled them on either side of her on the mattress to avoid squashing her, and rubbed his face against her tousled sable hair.

‘My thighs are going to give way,’ she murmured.

‘So are mine. They feel like jelly.’

Sarah giggled as he rolled over, taking her with him to fit neatly against his sweat-dampened chest and belly.

‘As always, that was exceptional,’ he said. ‘You’re enough to give a man a heart attack, Mrs Green.’

‘Oh, don’t be stupid, you’re as healthy as a horse,’ Sarah said.

And he was — healthy, fit, handsome, decent, prosperous (these days), and devoted to her. Sometimes — frequently, in fact — she was awed by her good fortune. True, she was still a prisoner of His Majesty and serving a seven-year sentence, but what did that matter? She’d married her master, and what a master he’d turned out to be.

‘Yes, well, right now this horse wouldn’t be out of place at the knackers’. It’s too hot for sexual acrobatics.’

Smiling, Sarah turned over to face him. ‘We didn’t have to do it twice.’

‘I felt we did, actually.’

Sarah laughed and poked him in the chest. ‘That’ll teach you.’ She snuggled into him, sniffing the faint scent of the sandalwood and lime cologne he always wore. ‘Friday told me something this morning. It’s a secret. At least, I think it is, though she didn’t actually tell me not to tell anyone else. But I’m not sure you count anyway.’

‘Thank you very much. Anyway, I bet I do.’

‘Oh, you won’t tell anyone. She’s finally met someone.’

‘Well, it’s about time. Anyone I know?’

‘I wouldn’t think so.’ Sarah paused. ‘Her name’s Aria.’ Beside her she felt Adam twitch in surprise.

‘
Her
name?’

‘Er, yes.’

‘A girl?’

‘Well, obviously.’

‘That’s interesting.’

‘Is it?’

‘Well, now that I think about it,’ Adam said, ‘I’m possibly not as surprised as I should be.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘She’s never had a man friend, has she? Well, not that I’m aware of. Are you surprised?’

Sarah said, ‘I did rather think she might be that way inclined. But, you know, it just never really seemed to matter, one way or the other.’

Adam ran his thumb across the curved, silver scar on Sarah’s cheek, then stroked and smoothed her hair as though she were a cat. ‘I don’t suppose it does, as long as she doesn’t advertise the fact. I do wonder, though, how she manages to do her job. I mean, all those men.’

‘She hates it, you know,’ Sarah said. ‘Well, when I say she hates it, I know she doesn’t get any pleasure from it, and some of her customers she can’t stand. You should hear what she says about them. A few she tolerates, though, a couple of her regulars.’

‘Then why does she do it?’

‘Money. She makes more in a week than we do some months in the shop.’

‘Not when we’re on the flash, though, I bet.’

‘No, maybe not then.’

But they’d been keeping very much on the right side of the law since Adam returned from Port Macquarie. Sarah, however, missed the jewellery rackets, and the thrill of living so dangerously, and she certainly missed the challenge of breaking into houses.

‘So what’s this girl like, do you know?’

‘She’s a New Zealander. A native girl. I saw her this morning. She’s very beautiful, quite exotic, and even taller than Friday. You should have seen them, Adam: together they look like a pair of Amazons. And Friday’s face when Aria was talking to her — she looks like she’s bewitched already.’

‘And she lives here in Sydney?’

‘No, she doesn’t.’ Sarah was quiet for several seconds. ‘And I think that’s going to be a problem.’

Chapter Nine

Grateful that she didn’t have to start work until one o’clock, Friday rose uncharacteristically early on Saturday morning, thanks to a clear head from limiting her drinks the previous evening, and got stuck into cleaning up her piggy room. She collected all the dirty shifts, stockings and towels from the floor and sent them down to the laundry, put away everything else vaguely cleanish, returned her hats to their boxes, changed the bed linen, tidied all the cosmetics scattered across the dressing table and wiped the powdery surface. She also returned half a dozen dirty tea cups and a reeking bowl filled with pipe ash to the kitchen, cleared out a sackful of empty gin bottles from under the bed (and the top of the clothes press, the windowsill and behind the chest of drawers), opened the window, and made a quick trip down to the flowerseller on George Street for bunches of violets and sweetpeas to sweeten the air.

At a quarter to nine Jack brought up the tin bath, followed by Ivy from the laundry, labouring under the weight of the first of a dozen buckets of steaming hot water. When the bath was six inches deep, Friday stripped off, stepped in and sat down, sighing as the luxuriously hot water rose to her waist. Normally when she had her weekly bath she lounged around in it, drinking gin and smoking her pipe until the temperature of the water became unpleasant and she was forced to get out, but today she lathered herself with a bar of Mrs H’s fancy soap immediately. She washed everywhere but her hair, which wouldn’t dry in time and wasn’t particularly dirty anyway. Once out and wrapped in a towel, she yanked on the bell-pull to summon Ivy to empty the bath, and sat down at her dressing table.

Staring at herself in the mirror she felt jittery with nerves. Should she put on powder and kohl and lip rouge? Or, being a New Zealander, would Aria not find that sort of thing pretty?

Shite!
Food! After Mahuika’s snide comments the other day, she didn’t want to risk insulting Aria by not offering her anything to eat or drink.

Friday ran out of her room into the corridor, her towel flapping, straight into a startled Ivy. ‘Quick, go down to the kitchen and ask Jenny to bring up some food on a tray. At exactly a quarter past ten. And a pot of tea. For my visitor.’

‘What sort of food?’

‘I don’t know. Cakes? Have we got any cakes?’

Ivy’s long, plain face got even longer as she frowned with concentration. ‘Cook did some shortbread yesterday. And a nice madeira cake for Mrs H.’

‘That’ll do.’

‘Mrs H’ll go mad if you pinch her madeira cake.’

‘Just ask Cook, Ivy,
please
? Tell her Mrs H said I could have it.’

And because Friday had not so long ago saved her from working for a particularly unpleasant master, and therefore she now regarded her with something close to reverence, Ivy nodded and trotted off.

‘And don’t forget to come back for the bath water!’ Friday called after her as she dodged back into her room.

No, she wouldn’t wear any make-up. Well, perhaps just the tiniest bit of kohl around her eyes, except her hands were shaking, and there was only one thing that would fix that. She opened a drawer, lifted out a bottle of gin and took a giant swig, closing her eyes briefly as the alcohol burnt its way down her throat. A moment later she felt its familiar, calming warmth spread through her chest and begin to seep into her blood. That was better. She rummaged through the drawer into which she’d dumped her cosmetics, found the kohl and a tiny brush, and expertly applied a thin line around each eye.

Now, what to wear? Something smart? Aria wore lovely dresses. Perhaps one of the gowns Mrs H had commissioned for her when she’d decided Friday didn’t look classy enough? She opened her clothes press and inspected them. They were actually very nice, but the problem was they weren’t really ‘her’. Too conservative, too sober —
too
classy, really. What was the point to pretending she was something she wasn’t?

Instead she chose an emerald-green dress cut quite low in the bodice and very fitted at the waist to show off her curves, and with only a hint of puff about the shoulder. She slipped it on over her head and closed the buttons at the side with the usual amount of difficulty, which was why she preferred skirt and bodice ensembles. The fact that she had to breathe in sharply while manoeuvring the buttons made it even harder — perhaps she’d been eating too many potatoes. She yanked her shift down under the dress so the lace wouldn’t show beneath the bodice, and slipped her feet into her favourite sturdy black lace-up boots. No, they weren’t right, not for indoors. She looked like she was off to work in the market gardens at Parramatta. She kicked them off again, threw them into the back of the press, and shut the door. She had satin slippers for work, but they were silly things and didn’t suit her at all. Bare feet would do.