Belle - Lesley Pearse [226]
‘I don’t know why Mog didn’t leave, Annie was so nasty to her sometimes,’ Belle said reflectively.
‘Because of you, of course,’ Jimmy said. ‘But I think too she was very attached to Annie. She told me that the woman who owned the place before her was always on her back, but Annie stuck up for her. Mog isn’t the kind to abandon anyone who has been good to her.’
‘I don’t think she had much idea of her own worth, even though she was the one who kept everything together,’ Belle said. ‘Tell me about how they came to split up. Didn’t Annie want Mog with her at her guest house?’
‘Annie just made her plans for herself,’ Jimmy said. ‘At the time I thought it was shabby of her, she didn’t seem to care about Mog at all, but as it turned out, it was for the best.’
‘I wonder when she’ll deign to come and see me. Or do you think she’s expecting me to go to her?’
Jimmy shrugged. ‘She’s a difficult woman to fathom. I’ve never told anyone this before, but I went to see her at the time Noah discovered you’d been sent to America. Apart from relaying that information, I suppose I just wanted to get to know her better, but she was very curt with me. She said that wherever you were, you surely could have written to her. Well, I pointed out you could very well have done so, but as the old place was burned down the letter wouldn’t have been delivered.’
‘I did send a card from New York,’ Belle said. ‘It never crossed my mind that they might not still be there. I used to imagine them in Jake’s Court, Mog hanging out the washing, Mother sitting at the kitchen table over dinner with the girls. And you too of course, running errands for your uncle. I thought about writing a proper letter once I was in New Orleans, but I didn’t because I thought it would be worse for Mog and Annie to know the truth about what had happened to me.’
‘I can understand that,’ Jimmy said. ‘But I couldn’t understand Annie’s attitude, she just made me angry. She turned everything around to make out she was the wronged one. I said as much and she told me to get out.’
Jimmy went on to tell Belle all the different things he’d done to try to trace her. She smiled as he described breaking into Kent’s office and his house down in Charing.
‘Didn’t you think that house was strange?’ she said. ‘I only saw the hall and a living room, but it was so pretty and nice, not the kind of house you’d expect a monster like him to live in.’
‘I thought just the same. I wonder if we’ll ever find out why it was like that,’ Jimmy said thoughtfully. ‘Could he really have been planning to take Millie there?’
Belle got a mental picture of Millie locked in an upstairs room and shuddered. ‘Don’t let’s talk about that, it makes me think of Pascal. I think he and Kent were two of a kind.’
‘I promise that one day you will wake up and see that you gained something from your experiences, however horrible the past couple of years have been for you,’ he said.
Belle raised her eyebrows quizzically. ‘That’s as unlikely as me finding out I’m actually King Edward’s love child,’ she said with a giggle.
Jimmy smiled. ‘Well, it happened to me. I was so upset when you disappeared, you were my only friend, and suddenly you were gone. But miraculously my life got better because of it. Mog came to stay after the fire, my uncle became happier with her around, and trying to find you gave us all new purpose and brought us all together. Even the pub is doing better because of it.’
‘Yes, I can see how it improved your life,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think I’ll ever get to the point where I can say I’m glad I was sold into prostitution.’
‘No, not that, but out of it came other things. I can only see it for myself when I look back. It was awful seeing Mog’s grief, I was beside myself with worry too. It was a dark, horrible time. Yet without it, would I have come to like and respect my uncle? I don’t think so. I gained Mog whom I adore,