The woman was horrified to hear that Cassie had been killed and immediately became much warmer. ‘She were nice,’ she said. ‘And her little girl as cute as could be, and well behaved. But I don’t know anything else about her, other than she lived in Myrdle Street. I’m so sorry she’s been killed. Why would anyone kill a nice woman like her?’

It was disappointing that the bath attendant knew nothing, but they chatted for a little while and Molly asked if she could see the baths, just so she’d understand how it worked.

‘You pay your money, I gives you a towel and some soap, and I tell you which bath is free,’ she said, leading Molly down a long corridor lined with small cubicles, a bath in each one. ‘I turn the hot water on from outside. It’s a set amount; you put the cold in yerself. I warn ’em not to drop their drawers on the floor or they’ll ’ave to go ’ome with wet ’uns.’

Molly sniggered. It all looked so austere: white tiles, too-bright lights, bare concrete floor, a slatted wooden board to stand on when you got out of the bath. And just a couple of hooks to hang your towel and clothes on. But she supposed if you had no bathroom of your own it was all right.

‘It ain’t so bad,’ the attendant said, clearly picking up on Molly’s distaste. ‘They can shout to their mates, ’ave a laugh with the other women. It’s nice and warm in the winter, too. They can do their washing and ironing here if they want, through the doors at the end. You must be one of the bleedin’ lucky ones that’s got yer own bathroom and inside lav at ’ome?’

‘Yes,’ Molly admitted, feeling ashamed she’d been so transparent. ‘Was Cassie all right about it? Or do you think she was like me, used to one at home?’

The attendant leaned back on a bathroom door and pulled some cigarettes out of her apron pocket. She took her time lighting one, looking at Molly all the while.

‘I’d say she had no real idea how folk like us live round here, ’cos the first time she come ’ere she looked scared to death,’ she said eventually, puffing smoke into the air. ‘She had Petal in a pushchair and I don’t think she could work out whether it was best to bath her or herself first. She learned fast, though. By the time she’d been three or four times she was like everyone else, ’aving a laugh and a joke, making the best of it.’

‘Did she ever tell you why she came to Whitechapel?’ Molly asked.

‘Why does anyone like her come ’ere?’ She shrugged. ‘’Cos it’s cheap. To disappear. You don’t come ’ere ’cos you like to slum it.’

At the library they also remembered Cassie and, here, the head librarian had read in the paper about her being murdered. ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ the woman said. ‘She was such a clever, well-spoken young woman. But then I was surprised when I first met her that she had a mixed race baby – not what you’d expect from someone who likes to read Jane Austen. Obviously, she’d got in with bad people.’

Molly had a real desire to say she was surprised that a librarian could be such a bigoted snob, but that wasn’t advisable if she was hoping to find out more about Cassie. Sadly, no one at the library knew anything more about her than that she took out at least four books a week and came in almost daily to read the papers.

Molly promised herself that she would go back to Whitechapel the following week and start asking about Cassie in shops and cafés, but when she mentioned to a couple of girls back at the hostel that she’d spent the day in the area, they both looked appalled. It seemed that everyone at Bourne & Hollingsworth thought of the East End as being dangerous and full of disease. It put Molly off a bit about going back, and it was another three weeks before she visited there again.

Yet Dilys thought Molly’s quest to find Petal was a wonderful one, and often, when they’d got into bed, Molly would read bits of Cassie’s journal to her, and they would discuss what she might have meant.

Molly had found references to Hastings and a place called Rye in some of Cassie’s writing.

‘Listen to this, Dilys,’ she said one night. ‘“The wind whistles across the marsh, forcing the trees to bow down to it. The sheep huddle together for warmth, and the few flowers that grow there are tiny and stunted, as are many of the folk that live there. Only the prickly gorse defies the wind, its yellow, sweet-smelling splendour spreads in defiance.”

‘What do you think of that?’ she asked her friend.

‘If I’d written like that at school I might not have got “Make more effort” written across my work.’ Dilys giggled.

‘Don’t you think Cassie was using the bleakness of the marsh to convey the sadness of her own life? That the wind is like someone laying waste to all her dreams and aspirations, and she is the gorse defying them?’

‘You sound like my English teacher, who used to tell me what Shakespeare meant. I never got it, and I don’t get Cassie’s stuff either.’ Dilys giggled again. ‘But I like you reading it and hearing your ideas. Who do you think the “someone’” is that’s laying waste her dreams?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe her mother or some other relative?’

Molly wondered if Cassie’s mother had been mad. She remembered once confiding in Cassie about her father, and seeing her friend wince as if she’d experienced the same kind of abuse. Of course, her father could’ve been the brute, before he went off to war. And if her mother hadn’t defended her, then that could be why she didn’t talk about either of them.

‘It’s a kind of mental illness,’ Cassie had said, about violence. ‘A rage inside your father that he can’t put out, maybe because something bad happened to him years ago, and when it boils up and spills over, he attacks you.’

She told Cassie about how her father had been robbed of the week’s takings from the furniture shop he’d worked at in Bristol and then blamed for the crime.

‘My advice is, don’t waste your sympathy on him,’ Cassie had responded, shaking her head. ‘Each one of us is given some sort of cross to bear; that is his, and he’s allowed it to destroy his life. He was fortunate that it was later proved he was innocent and he got compensation. Not many people get that.

‘I think he is the cross you have to bear, Molly. You can drag the misery he’s created around with you or toss it aside and choose your own path to happiness. Your mother has chosen her path, what she believes is the right thing to do, and you must accept it and leave her to it.’

One of Cassie’s poems was about crucifixion, and as Molly read it Cassie’s remark about the crosses they had to bear came back sharply into focus. She thought it was about Cassie being forced to give up the comfortable life she’d had to keep Petal. But Petal was no crown of thorns; she was Cassie’s delight, her reason for everything.

Molly was glad for Simon that he’d gone back to his wife, and hoped they’d find happiness again, yet she was disappointed he wasn’t in Sawbridge any longer and she wouldn’t be able to show him Cassie’s journal. He was a literary man, and he might have seen meanings in it that eluded Molly.

But he was gone, just another closed door, and however kindly George was in inviting her to stay at his house so she could see her mum, if her father got to hear she was there, it might just inflame her father’s temper.

George was another puzzle. He’d kissed her again before she left for London, and it had been a passionate kiss, not one from a mere friend. In the letters she’d had from him since, amongst the village news and amusing incidents concerning people she knew he had referred somewhat obliquely to not knowing how she felt about him. But he hadn’t revealed what he felt for her, so how could she respond?

Molly had discussed this with Rose, a girl she’d got friendly with who worked in Hosiery. She had a similar situation with Robert, her young man back in Birmingham.

‘I think we have to make up our minds what we want,’ Rose said. ‘Robert is a good man, all my family like him, and when I was living at home and working at the Co-op, I thought he was the one. But now I’m here and have seen how some people live, I don’t want to live in a couple of poky rooms with a bricklayer, however nice he is. I want style, nice clothes, to eat out in restaurants, and a house in a smart suburb.’