A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [42]
Fifi really didn’t miss Bristol, in fact sometimes she realized that days had gone past without her thinking about it at all. She had written home once, just to give her parents her new address. While she wrote to Patty every week, other friends had only got a postcard telling them how happy she was.
Happy didn’t really adequately describe how she felt; she was joyful. Joining Dan in London had strengthened their marriage and bonded them even closer together. Here they were on an equal footing, both still rather wide-eyed tourists finding their way around.
Fifi loved shopping in Victor Values. Conventional grocers were so dark and cramped, but this shop had bright lights, with everything priced and arranged in wide aisles. Shops like this had been nicknamed ‘supermarkets’, and most people thought they were a five-minute wonder because they didn’t see how they could keep the prices so low. Fifi didn’t agree; she felt it would be the traditional shops that would be forced out of business.
She was on top of the world as she made her way home along the busy Kennington Park Road with two laden bags, enough food for the whole week. Dan had managed to get them a second-hand fridge the previous day, and she thought it would be bliss not to have to shop for meat and milk every day any more. She was also dying to get home to read the paper she’d bought. The on-going scandal about the call-girl Christine Keeler and John Profumo, the Minister for War, was so exciting. It had all started back in March when Christine’s ex-lover had fired shots into the flat she was sharing with Mandy Rice-Davies, but now it seemed that John Profumo had been sleeping with a call-girl, and that she in turn was sleeping with Ivanov, a Russian attaché. Every day there was a new revelation. Dr Stephen Ward, a society osteopath, owned the flat, the two girls had swum naked in Lord Astor’s swimming pool, there were suggestions of kinky sex and drug-taking, and goodness knows what else would be revealed before long.
About twenty yards before the turning to Dale Street there was a piece of waste ground where some houses had been demolished. As always, Fifi glanced through the broken fence panels because it was an improvised playground for the local children. There were usually dozens of children in there, building camps, playing pirates and occasionally lighting fires. Fifi’s feelings were mixed about it. The child in her approved, for there were few places in London where children could have adventure and freedom. But her adult side worried, for it was after all a dangerous place, full of broken bottles, piles of rubble and other hazards.
To her surprise there were no children there today, despite the good weather. But as she walked on by she heard the sound of crying. Curious, she put down her shopping and stuck her head right through a hole in the fence to take another look.
One lone little girl was in there, sitting on the ground, hands covering her face, crying her heart out.
It was Angela, the youngest of the Muckle children.
As this was the child she’d seen being clouted by her mother on her first day in Dale Street, Fifi had put her under even closer scrutiny than anyone else in the family. It was clear she was the least favoured child. Her parents were always shouting at her, her older brother and sister bullied her, even her Aunt Dora appeared to have it in for her.
If Fifi had seen any of the other three children in apparent distress she would have walked on by. She had noticed the low cunning in their eyes and heard their foul language, and would suspect they were trying to trick her. They were known to snatch money from the hands of children on the way to the shop on a message and they’d slip into any open front door to steal. Fifi had seen them barge into old people, overturning dustbins and breaking milk bottles on the pavement. If reprimanded they would scream vicious abuse.
But Angela wasn’t like the others. She was cowed, not cocky, thin and malnourished. If her eyes met those of an adult