Belle - Lesley Pearse [11]
In one swift movement she leapt to her feet and to the door to pull back the bolt. She heard the man roar out something, but by then she had the door open and she raced down the two flights of stairs two at a time.
‘A man is hurting Millie! Save her!’ she shouted as she got to the last landing and saw Annie coming out of her office.
For just the briefest second her mother’s expression was so fierce Belle thought she would strike her. But without saying a word she moved swiftly towards the parlour.
‘Jacob!’ she called out. ‘Come with me to check on Millie.’
The bald, burly man was a newcomer to the house, Belle had seen him just once about a fortnight earlier when he was putting a new washer on the tap in the scullery. Mog had said he’d been hired to do odd jobs, but also to make sure there was no rowdiness upstairs during the evenings. He looked smart tonight in a dark green jacket, and he responded swiftly to Annie’s order, racing up the stairs.
Annie followed, but she paused, looking down at Belle and pointing to the door to the basement. ‘Down there, and stay there. I’ll deal with you later,’ she barked.
Belle sat at the kitchen table, her head in her hands, wishing that Mog would come down because she knew she could explain how this had all come about much more easily to her.
The kitchen clock said it was ten past ten. Clearly she’d been asleep in Millie’s room for much longer than she’d imagined. But she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t been woken up by the girls getting ready for the evening, or why Mog hadn’t come upstairs to find her when she didn’t return from cleaning the room. Mog was like a mother hen; she normally got frantic if Belle was missing for just an hour, and they always had tea together around six, before Mog had to go upstairs to prepare for the evening ahead.
The evenings were normally very tedious to Belle because she had to spend them alone. She would wash up the tea things, then read a newspaper if one of the gentlemen had left one upstairs on the previous evening. If there was no paper to read, she sewed or knitted. But she was usually in bed by half past eight because she couldn’t stand her own company any longer. Tonight, however, she wasn’t just lonely, she was terrified. Not for herself, though she was scared of what Annie would do to her, but for Millie. She could see her face so clearly in her mind’s eye, that silent scream, the way her head was tipped back and her eyes bulging. Had the man killed her?
There was no sound coming from the parlour upstairs, so maybe there had been no one but Jacob in there as she came down the stairs. That was understandable considering the snow, but she wondered where the girls and Mog were. Aside from Millie there were seven other girls, but even if they were all in their rooms, with or without a gentleman, surely some of them would have looked out when Annie and Jacob went running up the stairs?
Yet over and above her fear for Millie, and the possible repercussions of tonight’s events, were the shock and disgust she felt about what had been going on nightly above her head. How could she have been so stupid as not to know what was going on in the house she lived in?
How was she ever going to be able to hold her head up out on the streets now? How could she be friends with Jimmy without wondering if he’d want to do the same thing to her? No wonder Mog had said he wasn’t to take any liberties with her!
Belle heard a loud yell from out the back, quickly followed by banging and clattering, as if someone had knocked over the dustbins, then even more shouting from several different people. She ran into the scullery and towards the back door. She didn’t unlock it and go out, for she knew she was in enough trouble already, but she looked out of the window next to it.
There was nothing to see, just the snow covering all the old crates and boxes out there, and it was still coming down hard, the wind blowing it into drifts.
‘Belle!’
Belle wheeled round at her mother’s voice. She had come into the kitchen and was standing by the table,