Belle - Lesley Pearse [233]
If she had got pregnant while she was in New Orleans, would she have been a good mother? She couldn’t answer that, no one could until it happened to them. But she felt she must go to her mother. They had common ground now, and with that they might find they could be friends.
The problem was, she knew Garth, Mog and Jimmy were not going to let her go out. If she didn’t turn up at the café she knew her mother would feel it was because she wanted nothing to do with her. Belle felt she must go to her, if only to explain about Kent being on the loose.
It was just on nine now. It was Mog’s day for changing the sheets on the beds and Jimmy would still be working in the cellar until about half past ten. Garth could be anywhere; he didn’t go in for set routines. If she finished cleaning the bar really quickly she could shoot out of the side door at quarter past ten, and they’d all still think she was in the bar for at least another half-hour.
As she worked, washing and drying glasses, polishing the bar mirrors and the bar itself, then mopping the floor, she considered the risk involved in going out alone. As so many people had said, now Kent had shot a policeman he wasn’t likely to be hanging around here. And even if he was, he’d be holed up somewhere, not out in the streets or in a café.
She would give as her excuse when she got back that she wanted to get some materials to make a hat. Hopefully they might not have even missed her.
Belle washed her hands and face when she’d finished the bar, combed her hair and hung her apron on the back of the kitchen door. She wished she looked smarter to meet Annie. Mog had given her the green cotton dress she was wearing, as all her other clothes were too good to clean in, but it was dowdy and too big for her and made her look like a kitchenmaid.
Garth was out in the back yard, Mog was upstairs, singing as she changed beds, and Belle could hear clanking noises coming from the cellar, so she knew Jimmy was down there. She would go now while she could.
Luckily the side door had the kind of lock which didn’t need a key to lock behind her, so there was no open door to give her away. Once out in the street, she ran through an alley opposite and came out in Neal Street. She saw four policemen before she even got to the market, but whatever people had been saying last night in the bar, everywhere looked just as busy as it had always been. Belle heard a clock strike the half-hour just as she was approaching Maiden Lane.
Maiden Lane had become even muckier than she remembered. The left-hand pavement was blocked by scaffolding on a building, and there were piles of sand and heaps of bricks on the pavement, so she crossed over to the right. The theatres in the Strand had their back doors opening on to this street and there were overflowing dustbins and piles of cardboard boxes. She couldn’t see a café, but then, some of the buildings jutted out further than others, so she kept on walking down the street to look.
Suddenly a man grabbed her from behind, and a hand was clamped over her mouth. She knew in that instant that she’d been tricked, but before she could even react to that she found herself being dragged forcibly into a building.
She tried to kick back at her assailant, but he threw her against a wall, then kicked the door to the street shut. There was little light but even so she knew it was Kent, just by his shape and smell. She screamed at the top of her lungs until he silenced her with a punch in the face.
‘I should’ve killed you in the first place, I knew you’d be trouble,’ he snarled at her, thrusting a foul-smelling rag into her mouth to silence her. ‘I’ll finish you off this time though, but first you’ll be my ticket out of London.’
Her eyes were growing used to the gloom now and she saw him pick up a length of cord to tie her hands behind her and round her ankles in much the same way he had the first time he captured her. When he’d trussed her up, he flung her over his shoulder and carried