She went on to explain that Petal was still missing, and that she was on something of a mission to find her. Molly got out the only two photographs she had. One was of Cassie taken at the church fete last year, and the other was of Petal, a school photograph. Cassie had given it to Molly at Easter.
Dilys looked hard at the pictures. ‘Petal is really sweet,’ she said. ‘I hope whoever’s got her won’t hurt her. Cassie was lovely – she reminds me of Ava Gardner.’
Molly smiled. ‘She did look a bit like her, especially when she wore a tight sweater and a pencil skirt, but most of the time she was in a loose smock-type dress with wellingtons on her feet. She looks dark-haired there, but her hair was red. She used to dye it. I don’t know what colour it was before. The truth is, I know next to nothing about her, really. Not where she came from or anything. But I’ve got a journal of hers and I hope to find some clues there.’
Dilys kept asking questions about Cassie and even when they’d eventually turned out the light her voice came through in the dark: ‘Aren’t you afraid that if you dig too deep the person who killed Cassie might kill you?’
Molly’s first month passed so quickly she could hardly believe it. It was nice to be able to write home to her mother and tell her truthfully that she loved her job, had made lots of friends in the hostel and was happier than she’d ever been before. She wrote to George, too, telling him much the same, though she told him what she’d seen at the cinema rather than about the Saturday-night dancing at the Empire in Leicester Square.
The Empire was wonderful – the big band, the soft lights, the glittery balls turning on the ceiling, and very smartly turned-out young men to dance with, so different to the clod-hopping boys back home. A few were a bit too fresh, thinking one dance and a drink meant they could take liberties, but all the girls from work looked out for one another and, unless one of them said she wanted to go outside or walk home alone with someone, they stuck together.
Molly had danced with a man called Harry on her first night. A week later she saw him there again and he asked her out for a drink. She’d met him at Oxford Circus tube station as arranged, on the following Monday, full of excitement and wearing a new pink dress that had been marked down in the sale. But, to her consternation, he was a little drunk even when they met, slurring his words and propping himself up by leaning on her shoulder, and breathing beer fumes all over her. In the time she’d drunk one glass of Babycham he’d downed two pints of beer and a whisky chaser. Realizing that the evening could only get worse, when he left her to go to the men’s room, she walked out of the bar and scuttled back to the hostel.
Dilys was sitting up in bed reading when she got in. ‘Gosh! What went wrong? Didn’t he turn up?’ she asked.
When Molly told her what had happened, Dilys laughed.
‘I went out with a man like that once. He was drunk, too, when we met, and got even drunker during the evening. As he was walking me home – or should I say “lurching me home”? – he threw up, and it splattered all over my coat.’
Molly grimaced. ‘Yuk. I hope you pushed him into the gutter?’
‘No, I was stupid enough to feel sorry for him,’ Dilys admitted. ‘But then he tried to kiss me, and that was so disgusting I came to my senses and ran off.’
Molly undressed and got into bed while Dilys told her about other disappointing dates she’d had. Molly loved listening to her; her sing-song Welsh accent was lovely. ‘Another bloke didn’t have a penny to his name, so we had to walk around in the rain. Another one turned up in his work overalls, and I was all done up to go dancing. I’ve had men asking me to lend them money for the evening; ones who didn’t want to take me anywhere except a park to grope me. I tell you, it’s enough to make you want to give up on finding someone special.’
‘I know this is a bit personal,’ Molly said hesitantly, ‘but have you ever gone the whole way?’
‘Ooh, there’s cheeky you are!’ Dilys replied indignantly. ‘I’ll wait till I’m married, thank you very much. Me dad would go potty if I got up the spout before I was wed. How about you?’
‘I haven’t either,’ Molly said. ‘But then I haven’t met that many men I feel that way about. There was a chap once, but he turned out to be a right sod. I met a writer called Simon, too, I thought he was perfect – handsome, from a good family – and I used to day-dream about him quite a bit. Turned out he was married, though, so just as well he didn’t try it on with me.
‘There is George, a nice policeman back home, though. I went to school with him. But now I’m here in London, everything and everyone from home seems to be fading away.’
Dilys nodded in agreement. It was the same for her. ‘I was homesick at first, but not any more. I went back home for a week’s holiday just after the Coronation, but after a couple of days I was dying to get back here. All my old friends seem so set in their ways, and Cardiff seemed very small.’
Long after Dilys had gone to sleep, Molly lay awake, thinking how odd it was that after only a month she couldn’t imagine ever living anywhere but London. She loved the bustle and noise, the beautiful parks, lovely old buildings, even the element of danger in some of the backstreets of Soho. She had the feeling she could become anything she wanted to be here.
Back home in the shop, she’d only ever heard about people’s ailments, about their children and what they were cooking for dinner. Gossip was usually about such trivial things, like someone jumping the queue at the doctor’s, a neighbour failing to give back something they’d borrowed, or the dog a few houses away that never stopped barking.
Customers in Bourne & Hollingsworth were often just as chatty, but they told her fun things, like they were meeting an old friend for lunch or they had come to London to buy something for a special occasion. Maybe they were just as dull as all her old neighbours when they were back home, but being in London was like living in a bubble that excluded dullness and mediocrity, and it made people dress up in their best clothes, smile because they were out to enjoy themselves and enjoy spending their money instead of begrudging it.
George had written to her every week so far. It was in his first letter that he told her that Simon had gone back to his wife and left the village. Molly felt that George had enjoyed telling her that – another reminder that people back in Somerset were small-minded.
But she had to concede that, small-minded or not, George was keeping a close eye on her mother. He reported back that Mrs Swainswick, the part-time help in the shop, had told him that Molly’s father had been less grumpy since she had left, and her mother was less nervy.
‘Perhaps,’ George suggested, ‘he’s happier now he has your mum’s entire attention.’
Molly didn’t care what it was that had made her father more amenable; it was a load off her mind to hear he wasn’t being violent or abusive to her mother.
On her second day off Molly went back to Whitechapel and spent the morning talking to Constance and finding out about the places Cassie used to go to: the library, Victoria Park in Bethnal Green, the market and the public baths. It was a bit of a shock to Molly to discover that people who didn’t have bathrooms – and that was nearly everyone – had to go to the public baths. So, mainly out of curiosity, she made her way there first that afternoon.
There was a big woman with a large, shiny, red face behind the desk. Molly got out the photograph of Cassie and showed it to the woman. ‘Have you seen this woman before?’ she asked.
The older woman just glanced at the picture. ‘Yep. Dozens of times. Why d’you wanna know?’
Molly explained what had happened to Cassie and Petal as briefly as she could. ‘The police aren’t doing much to find her killer or Petal, so I’m trying to discover more about her past which might help.’