Belle - Lesley Pearse [18]
Belle felt she’d held herself quite well in the immediate aftermath of the murder. She hadn’t become hysterical or blurted out anything she shouldn’t. She hadn’t even felt afraid either, despite everyone else in the house being convinced they were all in mortal danger. But it seemed as if the shock had just been delayed, for on the third day she woke before it was light from a nightmare of Millie’s death. It had been as if it was in slow motion, every little detail magnified and stretched out, making it a thousand times more terrifying. All that day she’d found herself dwelling on it further, not just the murder but the nature of the house she lived in.
The word ‘fucking’ kept running through her mind, just a swear word she had heard daily since she was a tiny child, but now she knew that was what men came to the house for, it had a sinister ring to it. Some of the girls were only a few years older than she was, and she couldn’t help but wonder if her mother intended her to become a whore as well.
Before Millie’s death she scarcely ever gave a thought to her mother’s business. Maybe that was just because she’d grown up with it, the same as children of a butcher or a public house landlord. Yet now that business was on her mind constantly. She found herself looking at the girls differently, wanting to ask them how they felt about it and why they chose to do it.
It seemed to Belle that her mother must have been a whore too, and in all probability her father was one of her customers. That sickened her, yet it could be the explanation as to why Annie was always so chilly with her. Young and inexperienced as she was, Belle realized that a baby had to be the last thing any whore wanted; it would just make their life twice as hard.
Before all this had happened Belle had felt secure and even a little superior to her neighbours. Her home was clean and tidy, she could read and write well, she was well dressed and healthy and everyone remarked on how pretty she was. Her dream of having a little hat shop had always seemed attainable, for she’d filled a whole pad with sketches of hats she designed. She’d intended to go into the milliner’s in the Strand one day and beg them to take her on as an apprentice so she could learn how to make hats.
But her confidence was gone now. She felt as low and worthless as any of the street urchins who slept underneath the railway arches in Villiers Street or in the abandoned boxes around Covent Garden market.
As if the hat shop owner would take on the daughter of a brothel keeper!
It struck Belle too that all this time she’d been acting a bit superior, many of the shopkeepers in Seven Dials must have found it hilarious that a brothel keeper’s daughter had the cheek to put on such airs and graces. She blushed to think of what they were saying about her; maybe they were even laying bets on how long it would be before she was selling herself.
She tried to talk to Mog about this, but Mog was quite short with her. ‘Don’t take that attitude about your mother, Belle, you’ve got no idea how hard it is for a woman to make a living,’ she said tartly. ‘Cleaning, dressmaking, serving in a shop, they all pay so little and the hours are so long. I don’t always approve of what your mother does, but I won’t have you turning your nose up at her running this place. She did what she had to do, to get by. I hope you never find yourself in a position like that.’
The walls of the house seemed to be closing in on Belle; however hard she tried to banish it, the image of Millie’s eyes popping out of her head, and that dreadful man holding his cock against her cheek, wouldn’t leave her. She desperately needed fresh air, the sound of something other than the girls squabbling upstairs, or the sight of Annie’s haunted expression.
Above all she wanted to see Jimmy. For some reason she couldn’t attempt to rationalize, she felt he would understand what she was going through.
She put on her old grey, fur-trimmed cloak and her stoutest boots, and slipped out of the back