Praise for This Lovely City

‘Full of life and love, This Lovely City is a tender, at times heart-breaking, depiction of a city at once familiar and unrecognisable. It made my heart soar’

STACEY HALLS, SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE FAMILIARS

‘I loved, loved, loved it, and desperately wanted things to work out for Lawrie and Evie’

CATHY RENTZENBRINK

‘Superb… compelling storytelling, beautifully drawn characters and atmosphere that’s deeply immersive’

HARRIET TYCE, AUTHOR OF BLOOD ORANGE

‘This Lovely City is a beguiling, atmospheric and important novel, with wonderful, memorable characters and a vital message about love, loyalty and hope’

CAROLINE LEA, AUTHOR OF THE GLASS WOMAN

‘Expect to be obsessed … [a book] you need to know about’

GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

‘A thought-provoking and imaginative debut that conjures up the experiences of the Windrush generation in post-war London. Heartbreaking but full of hope’

WOMAN & HOME

‘Louise Hare writes so effortlessly. It was a joy to read’

WOMAN’S WEEKLY

LOUISE HARE is a London-based writer and has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. Originally from Warrington, the capital is the inspiration for much of her work, including This Lovely City, which began life after a trip into the deep-level shelter below Clapham Common.

This Lovely City

Louise Hare

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Louise Hare 2020

Louise Hare asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © March 2020 ISBN: 9780008332587

Version 2020-02-18

Note to Readers

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 Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008332570

For Mum and Dad, for everything.

‘Ever so welcome, wait for a call.’

WEST INDIAN PROVERB

‘It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.’

ENOCH POWELL

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dediation

March 1950

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

April 1950

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

December 1950

Chapter 27

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

March 1950

‘All fish does bite but shark does get di blame’

WEST INDIAN PROVERB

1

The basement club spat Lawrie out into the dirty maze of Soho, a freezing mist settling over him like a damp jacket. He shivered and tightened his grip on the clarinet case in his right hand. He’d best hurry on home before the fog thickened into a ‘pea-souper’, as they called it round here. The hour was later than he’d have liked; the club had been packed and the manager always paid extra if the band stuck around, keeping the crowd drinking.

‘Done for the night?’ The doorman leaned against the wall by the entrance, waiting for the last stragglers to leave.

Lawrie nodded. He’d been invited to stop for a drink with the band after the last set but he had somewhere to be. The night’s moonlighting had been a last-minute call out. He’d already arranged to take Evie out to the pictures but he needed the money and his name was just getting known around town: Mr Reliable. Able to fit in with any band at short notice. Call Lawrie Matthews, he’s your man; he’ll play anything for a shilling or two.

It might be after three in the morning, but the street was still open for trade. Across the road a couple of girls loitered, hardly dressed for the March weather, their legs bare and their jackets open. They sheltered in a shop doorway, huddled together as they smoked. One of them called over to him but he pretended he hadn’t heard. That sort of entertainment wasn’t for him. A few minutes of pleasure taken in a dark piss-scented alleyway could not outweigh the guilt. This he knew.

Even back home in Jamaica, he’d never felt confident in himself, not like his older brother Bennie, but this city forced him even further inside himself. It was a chronic condition, like asthma or arthritis; he could go a day or so feeling perfectly normal and then just a word or a glance was enough to remind him that he didn’t belong. He liked working the clubs because he could just play his clarinet and get lost in the music. His fellow musicians respected him; many of them even looked like him. He revelled in the applause that came when his name was shouted out and he stepped forward to give his small bow and a smile, just the right side of bashful. But as soon as he left the warmth of the club, things changed. People looked and decided what he was without knowing a single thing about him. Most of them were well-meaning. Somehow that was worse.

He walked swiftly down to Trafalgar Square, putting on a sprint as he saw his night bus approaching, leaping on the back just before it pulled away and clambering up the steps to the upper deck. He sat down, panting slightly through exertion and relief.

Settled, he looked out of the window at the desolate streets rolling by. The city appeared defeated beneath the weak glow of the late winter moon, which lazily cast its light down on the abandoned remnants of buildings that looked flimsy enough to blow over in the backdraught, if only the driver would put his foot down. Almost five years now since VE Day, almost two years since Lawrie had landed at Tilbury, and the city was still too poor to clean itself up. Austerity they called it, as if giving it a name made it more acceptable to those struggling to make ends meet.

The double decker wound its lethargic way south of the river and Lawrie tried to stay awake. His eyes were heavy but the draught through the window kept him shivering enough that he didn’t nod off. He’d be home just in time to change into his uniform and swallow down some breakfast before heading out again to his proper job.

Jumping off at the Town Hall stop in Brixton, the last passenger left on board, he tugged his scarf up over his chin to ward off a wind that felt like icy needles stabbing against his face. By the time he turned the corner of his street his face was already numb and his gloved hand felt stiff around the handle of the clarinet case. He wiggled his fingers and looked down, checking they were still there.

Home at last; a chip of grass green paint flaking away from the swollen wood of the gate as he swung it open, the rough edge catching his glove. He let himself in the front door, careful to close it quietly behind him. Everyone would still be asleep; he could hear Arthur’s less than gentle snores through the thin wood of the door that led to what had been the front room before Mrs Ryan had to let it out for much needed cash. He silently pulled off his shoes and shrugged off his coat, hanging it up by the door, his trilby next to it.

Upstairs in his bedroom he stowed the clarinet safely away at the back of his wardrobe. He trusted his fellow residents well enough, but his mother had always preached that temptation could befall the best of men. That stick of rosewood had been his father’s before him. Irreplaceable. Maybe one day he would pass it on to a son or daughter himself. He’d dared to mention that dream to Evie only a few weeks ago, and her smile had given him hope.

It was a room that his mother would have been ashamed to offer her cook. Besides the wardrobe there was only space left for a narrow bed and just enough room on the floor for his friend Aston to sleep on when he was in town, which seemed to be less often in recent months. The small window, with a view from the back of the house, let in a little bit of light and a lot of draught. Lawrie had rolled up some newspaper and jammed it into the gap between the window and its frame, but that wasn’t enough to stop the inside of the glass from frosting over.

His uniform was ready on its hanger, but the cold had stiffened his fingers and it was a slow process; shedding the suit of a professional musician and putting on his everyday postman’s uniform. He blew on his hands, trying to get some warmth into them, but he already knew that only a hot mug of tea would work.

Down in the kitchen, he expertly lit the flame on the stove and stared out of the window as the kettle boiled. He fancied he could see the sky lighten slightly as the hour grew closer to dawn. The kettle began its low whistle, and Lawrie lifted it off the ring before it could wake anybody with a full screech. Mrs Ryan would be up early so he made a full pot, tugging the hand-knitted tea cosy around it so that she could have a hot cuppa as soon as she came down. He always let it sit a good long while. He’d never been a big tea drinker before meeting Mrs Ryan, so he’d become used to the way she brewed it. He kept one eye on the time as he clasped the mug, his fingers softening, the feeling returning, as he sat at the table and enjoyed the silence and warmth of the kitchen.

When the clock hands read half past four it was time to go. Lawrie wrapped up again in his heavy coat and the deep burgundy scarf that Evie had knitted him for Christmas. Reluctantly, he forwent his beloved lined leather gloves for the bobbled fingerless ones that did what they could to protect his precious hands against the elements while still allowing him to work easily. Pausing before unlatching the door, he took an extra few seconds to adjust his postman’s cap on his brow before the long, age-speckled mirror, his forehead bisected by a crack in the glass, courtesy of a V-1 that had fallen in the next street in darker days.

‘Oi!’ Derek, Mrs Ryan’s son, stood at the top of the stairs, just out of bed and wearing only an off-white vest and pants. His mother would have words if she saw the state of him. In his hand was a brown paper package. ‘Take these over to Englewood, would you? Usual place.’ He threw the package down and Lawrie caught it lightly, nodding his consent. More black-market stockings, he guessed. Rationing had made Derek a fortune. He tucked the package away in the hallway cupboard to collect after his shift.

The sorting office was only a ten-minute walk but Lawrie had to be early. He had to be the first to arrive. He glanced up at the house next door as he pulled the front door closed behind him, but Evie’s window stayed dark. Not yet five and she’d be fast asleep. Last summer the early dawns had woken her, the sun rising to greet the city as he left for work. He’d pause and wait, turning when he heard the scrape of her sash window opening up. They’d never speak – she’d hold a finger to her lips and smile down at him worried that her mother would hear, even though she was unlikely to. Agnes Coleridge took sleeping pills and snored louder than any man Lawrie had heard, the rumble audible through the party wall. He’d smile back and Evie would blow him a kiss as she rubbed sleep from her eyes. And even though the dark mornings had put paid to this small joy, he couldn’t help but pause for a moment beneath her window. Just in case.

‘You!’

Lawrie stifled a groan. ‘Sir?’ He turned to face Eric Donovan who was waddling down the aisle in his direction, his creased shirt already coming untucked from trousers whose waistband looked to be on the verge of capitulation.

‘Get a move on today, boy, you hear? Second lot’s gone out late twice this week already.’ The words were barked around an unlit Woodbine that perched on Donovan’s narrow bottom lip; the slimmest part of him.

‘Yessir.’ Lawrie had never headed out late, but he’d learned there was nothing to be gained in talking back to the boss.

‘And don’t forget my order.’ Donovan lowered his voice, Lawrie nodding to show he understood. Donovan’s sweet tooth kept Lawrie in his good books, Derek supplying bags of white sugar to maintain Donovan’s addiction.

Lawrie put his head down and got on with the sorting while his fellow postmen straggled in, the air filling with a cacophony of male voices. Joining in with the general banter cheered him up by the time he’d got his bag packed, hefting it across his back and adjusting his stance to accommodate the weight. His walk took him back down his own street – past Evie’s house – so he didn’t complain, despite it being one of the heavier routes.

Evie answered the door when he knocked at the Coleridges’, a round of toast in one hand and a shy smile on her face that brightened his mood in an instant. He didn’t deserve a girl this beautiful, not after what he’d done, and yet here she was.

‘Anything for me this morning, Mr Postman?’

‘Always.’ He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips, one eye checking over her shoulder in case her mother made a sudden appearance. He didn’t take it personally that he was forbidden to cross the threshold. He was sure that Mrs Coleridge would have said as much to any man who was wooing Evie. After all, his skin was barely a shade darker than her own daughter’s. Evie’s father had returned to wherever he’d come from without knowing he had a baby on the way, leaving Agnes Coleridge holding a mulatto child. No wonder she had a disposition as bitter as quinine.

‘Evie! Shut that door, will you? D’you want me to catch my death?’ The kitchen door slammed.

‘Don’t mind her.’ Evie pulled the door to behind her and wrapped her arms around her body, a flimsy protection against the cold, standing there in a plain blue cotton dress, navy jumper and her house slippers. ‘You got time for a cuppa? I can bring it out.’

Lawrie adjusted his bag across his back so that there was space for her in his arms, pulling her off the step and holding her tight to keep warm. ‘Not today.’

‘Is it Donovan? You should tell him what’s what.’ Evie fussed with his scarf, making sure his tender skin was protected.

‘I can manage him just fine.’ Lawrie stole another kiss before letting her go. ‘Just one letter today, ma’am.’ She laughed and took it, pressing the palm of her other hand to his cheek. ‘I’ll call round tonight when you’re home from work. You have a good day now.’

She leaned against the doorframe and watched as he made his way up the street, pushing envelopes into letterboxes, just as she did every day, whatever the weather. It was a miracle she’d never caught a cold, but Mrs Ryan reckoned that love did something strange to a body – that if it could be bottled or turned into pills it would make penicillin look like an old wives’ remedy. At the corner, he turned back to wave and blow a kiss. She never went inside until he was out of sight.

Towards the end of the day, as he sat in the police station, he would wonder if in this moment he’d jinxed himself – walking around with that stupid grin on his face as if he were the luckiest man alive.

The morning followed its familiar rhythm. First man back at the sorting office, first back out with the next delivery, smirking at the look of disappointment on Donovan’s face. He had a little gossip with Mrs Harwood as he gave her a hand carrying her shopping bags home and thanked Mr Thomson for a racing tip that he wouldn’t use himself but would pass on to Sonny who loved a little gamble. Lawrie clocked off in the early afternoon, declining the offer to join the others in the pub down the street. He tried to go with them once or twice a week, but only because he felt he should. He liked a game of snooker or dominoes but he really didn’t have a lot in common with these men: mainly married, mainly ex-servicemen, all white. Besides, he still had Derek’s delivery to make.

He made a short detour home to pick up his bicycle and the package. Englewood Road was on the south side of Clapham Common, a place that was close to home; that green expanse of open land beneath which he had spent his first few nights in England. He remembered arriving there, that summer of 1948, and wondering how the sun could be so bright and yet so chill. And then they’d led him into the deep-level shelter, laughing at his terror at being underground, and fed him tasteless sandwiches along with the rest of the Windrush passengers who were unfortunate enough to have nowhere else to go.

The south side of the Common was busy with traffic, those famous red buses no longer a sight that thrilled him. At weekends the paths that cut across the Common would be much busier: couples strolling, children playing, fathers teaching their sons to sail boats on the ponds or feed the ducks. This was where he’d first set eyes on Evie, and where they’d had their first real kiss the summer before, sitting in the deep grass on a long hot Saturday afternoon. In better weather the air would be full of the shrieks of young children playing games, the chatter of their mothers as they exchanged gossip and pushed their progeny in huge Silver Cross prams that forced Lawrie from the path and onto the grass.

On this cold March afternoon, only the odd dog walker had ventured out. At this time of day he often saw these middle-aged women with their precious pets emerging from the large houses that surrounded the Common to walk their pampered animals in circles. Their children were grown and their housework managed by a housekeeper or a charlady, someone like Mrs Coleridge who did for a family over on the north side. They came striding along with an entitlement that Lawrie would never possess, letting their dogs off the leash and looking the other way as their beloveds squatted and left the mess for someone else to step in. Just before he reached Eagle Pond, Lawrie looked up and saw one such woman coming towards him, veering to one side as she walked briskly down the centre of the path; there was a Jack Russell trotting along at her heels, and if Lawrie had learned anything in his postal career it was to watch out for those little bastards. The woman stared as he rode past, and he knew that if he looked back she’d be watching him. Making sure he kept moving and didn’t hang around like a bad smell.

The lady who answered the door at Englewood Road was no better. Barely two words to say to him, neither of them wasted on thanks, but the money felt comforting in his pocket. Lawrie’s cut was twenty per cent, bargained up from ten the year before. Derek needed a trusted delivery man, he’d argued. Someone who didn’t look suspicious knocking on a door and handing over a brown paper package. Who better than the local postman?

Maybe he should take Evie out, he mused. Not just to the pictures. The boss of the club where he’d played the night before, he’d mentioned a few times that he’d get Lawrie a good table if he wanted to bring his girl along. Lawrie always smiled back and thanked him for the offer, said that he’d let him know. He wasn’t sure what he was wary of. There was no shame in playing music for a living. It wasn’t as though Evie didn’t know what he did but he liked that she was separate from all that. The women who frequented the club, not all of them but a few, they reminded him of his mistakes. They reminded him of Rose.

He cycled back the way he’d come, recognising the woman he’d seen with the terrier as he drew close to Eagle Pond, but the dog was nowhere to be seen. There was something strange about the way she was moving, and he found himself slowing down. She was pacing up and down in front of the pond, looking for something. Her gait was lopsided and, when she drew closer, he saw that her face was wet from tears that were blinding her. She didn’t notice Lawrie until the last moment, suddenly aiming towards him and coming up short as she took him in properly. She held herself rigid, her mouth gasping for air that her lungs didn’t seem to want to accept.

‘Ma’am?’ Lawrie swung his leg and dismounted, making his movements slow so that she didn’t spook. ‘You all right? Can I help you?’

She looked over her shoulder but turned back to him, fixing her eyes on his uniform. Whatever she’d seen was more frightening than one skinny black man. And there was no one else in sight. ‘You – you’re… a postman?’ Her tongue tripped as she spoke.

‘Yes, ma’am. Do you need help?’

She nodded and pointed in the direction she’d come from, a ragged sob creasing her body.

He couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary at first. There was the pond, and there he spied the terrier. The small dog was soaked through. Barking urgently at him, it ran back towards the water.

‘The pond.’ The woman squeezed out the words and he noticed now that her hands were filthy, her coat spattered with mud.

‘There’s something in the pond?’

It was useless. She had begun to shiver, her teeth actually chattering as shock took hold. Lawrie laid his bike down on the grass and headed towards the pond on foot. The dog was still barking in a fury, running laps between the edge of the pond and the path.

‘What you got, boy?’

The dog splashed into the water, checking back to make sure he was being followed. There was a bundle there, a dirty blanket that once had been white. Lawrie crouched by the edge next to a smaller set of footprints that must have belonged to the woman. It didn’t look like much, this wad of sodden wool, but that didn’t stop fear from squeezing his chest tight as he reached out with his right hand, the palm of his left sinking into freezing mud as he tried to keep his balance.

He strained his arm and caught an inch of fabric between two fingers. Pulling gently, the bundle moved closer and he grabbed a tighter hold. The wool was heavy with water. White and yellow embroidered flowers peeked out from beneath the pond filth. Daisies. When he lifted it the bundle was heavier than he’d anticipated, but it wasn’t the weight that sent him crashing to the ground – only sheer luck landing him onto the bank rather than into the water. His heart pounded his ribs so hard that he glanced down at his chest, expecting to see it burst out through his coat, scattering buttons onto the ground.

The blanket lay there on the grass, the bundle coming apart. A baby’s arm had escaped, along with a shock of dark curly hair and a glimpse of a cheek. It could have been a doll, but one touch had been enough to convince him that it wasn’t. The hand was frozen stiff but the skin gave as his fingers had brushed against it.

Someone had left a baby in the pond to die. A baby whose skin was as dark as Lawrie’s.

2

Typing had a rhythm to it that Evie enjoyed. When she was in a good mood, more often than not these days, she sang along quietly to the tapping of the keys as she transcribed Mr Sullivan’s letters. He called her his little songbird and had been known to pat her on the head like a child, but he was a nice older gentleman and she knew she was lucky to have him. When his last secretary had left to get married, Evie had only been in the typing pool for a few months. Mr Sullivan’s single stipulation for her replacement was that she should be the fastest and most accurate typist. Mrs Jones, the pool supervisor, had sent Evie upstairs with a sly smile on her lips, and Evie had braced herself for his polite excuse but Mr Sullivan’s jaw had only dropped half an inch when he saw her, quickly masked by a smile, and it was Evie who had skipped back downstairs to whisk away Mrs Jones’s smirk along with her coat and bag.

She loved her job at Vernon & Sons. A light and airy office on the third floor, a desk by the window so that she could indulge in the odd daydream, and her best friend sitting right opposite. Delia was attached, professionally speaking, to the young Mr Vernon, the boss’s son, and would fix a tight smile to her face each time she had to untangle herself from his wandering hands and their clammy palms, her head turned away from his halitosis. As Ma often said, thank goodness Evie had not been born pretty and blonde. Not that Delia was a bad typist, only the young Mr Vernon had his own set of requirements when it came to secretaries.

‘I’ll be off now, Evie.’ Mr Sullivan emerged from his office, hat on head and overcoat slung over an arm. ‘I’m taking a slightly longer lunch today but you won’t tell anyone, will you?’ He winked and grinned, in the manner of a kindly uncle to his favourite niece.

Evie smiled conspiratorially. ‘I’ll not say a word. Off anywhere special?’

‘Just to see the kiddies.’ His eldest daughter had two of her own now and lived just off Lavender Hill, only up the road. ‘I’ll be back by three if anyone needs me.’

She waved him off. It was one o’clock and the offices were all emptying out; she could hear doors opening and closing throughout the three floors that the company occupied, echoing up and down the staircase. The girls would be heading to the small staffroom, or outside if they were brave enough, to eat their sandwiches. The men would be going out to a café or home for a hot meal, to see their wives, or mistress in the case of the young Mr Vernon – he’d packed his wife off to Surrey during the war and never thought to bring her back.

‘You almost done?’ Delia whizzed a sheet of paper from her typewriter with a flourish. ‘I’m starving.’

‘Two ticks.’ Evie locked her drawer. Things had a habit of going missing when she didn’t.

‘Off out are you?’

Evie looked up, stifling a groan. The suspected thief herself was standing in the doorway, her lip curling upwards in a sneer as she stared at Evie.

‘Hello, Mildred,’ Delia said, raising her voice. ‘Can we help you?’

Mildred sidled into the room. ‘We’re having a whip round for Hilda. She’s getting married a week on Saturday.’

‘Hilda?’ Delia pulled a thoughtful face, pretending she didn’t know who she was. Hilda and Mildred were thick as thieves, each as spiteful as the other. ‘Is she one of the typing pool girls? They all look the same to me.’

Evie saw Mildred’s face flush.

‘Are you going to put anything in or not?’

‘I think I can spare a bit of change.’ Delia reached for her purse and dropped a few coins into Mildred’s palm.

Mildred scowled and closed her hand around the loose pennies. ‘Don’t worry, Evie, I don’t expect you to chip in. I know you’re hard up.’

Evie’s jaw dropped as Mildred smirked, disappearing before Evie could think of a smart retort.

‘I’d love to give her a good smack,’ Delia said.

Delia had been Evie’s best friend since the first day of school. All the little girls and boys had been dressed up in new uniforms, drowning in oversized clothes that their mothers prayed they would not outgrow before year end. Agnes Coleridge knew well by then what the other mothers would whisper about her at the school gates, and she wouldn’t give them more ammunition than they already had. A talented seamstress, she had sewed Evie’s hem so that she had a properly fitting skirt that could be let out as she grew. Evie had cried that morning as her mother cursed and plaited her hair, pulling tighter until she’d quashed its rebellion. Ma had wiped her daughter’s tears with a damp flannel and kissed her forehead roughly.

At the school gates Evie had been unsure. Most of the children seemed to know one another but the Coleridges had only just moved to Brixton from Camberwell the week before. Ma had given her a little shove towards the teacher and told her she’d be back at the end of the school day. Miss Linton was young and smiley, her glasses making her hazel eyes look like giant marbles. She was too young to know what to do when Mildred had thwarted her seating plan by refusing to sit next to Evie. Delia was the one who shoved her hand straight in the air when Miss Linton asked for a volunteer to change places.

Like a bad smell Mildred had always been there in the background, impossible to get rid of. Nothing wound Mildred up more than knowing that Evie and Delia occupied privileged desks upstairs while she languished down in the typing pool with her poor WPM and tardy timekeeping. Evie had caught her before, sneaking around her desk when she thought that Evie had left for the day. She fingered the key to her desk drawer lightly and dropped it into her pocket.

‘Usual?’ Delia asked.

Evie nodded as they pulled on their coats and went downstairs, emerging onto St John’s Road, just up from Clapham Junction station. The street was busy as usual, buses piling down in both directions, but they were only heading to the café next door.

‘Egg and chips twice and tea for two, please.’ Delia waved the menu away as they sat at their usual table, delivering their order to the waitress. ‘Honestly, I don’t know why she bothers asking. Are you seeing Lawrie tonight?’

Evie shook her head. ‘The band got a regular Thursday night gig in Soho. It’ll be just another evening in with Ma. She’s taken on too much piecework again and I said I’d help out.’ Not that she’d have been given a choice but it felt better to imagine that her mother was like anyone else’s.

‘What about tomorrow after work? Fancy coming shopping? I need to get some new shoes. These ones are worn through.’ Delia stuck her leg out from under the table so that Evie could see the stretched leather, her big toe almost through at the front as she wiggled it around.

‘All right but it’ll have to be quick. I want to see Lawrie before he goes into town – Friday nights they play at the Lyceum.’ She barely saw Lawrie during the week these days; a musician in great demand, their relationship was becoming a series of stolen moments between their day jobs and the band’s growing popularity.

Delia smiled wryly. ‘I see how it is. Lawrie comes first. You’ll be getting married before long and I’ll never see you no more. You’ll be spending your days baking pies for Lawrie’s tea and popping out beautiful brown children for him. And you’ll remember that once you had a friend who you used to have fun with but now she’s a dried-up old spinster and you don’t have time for her.’

‘Stop it!’ They were both giggling now. ‘Besides you’re a long way off becoming a spinster. And if I do get married then you’ll get to be my bridesmaid.’

‘I’ve been a bridesmaid. Twice. It’s not as exciting as you seem to imagine.’ Delia’s nose wrinkled.

They both fell silent while the waitress plonked down a heavy tray laden with teapot, cups and saucers, milk, sugar.

‘Tell you what we should do.’ Delia lifted the lid to check on the tea, determining that longer was required. ‘Let’s go to the Lyceum tomorrow night and see Lawrie play.’

Evie bit back her immediate response, to say that her mother wouldn’t let her. She was eighteen after all. She could leave home any time she wanted, marry Lawrie if she felt like it without having to ask permission. And she’d rather face up to Ma than lie.

‘Yes, let’s do it,’ she said, with more resolution than she felt.

Their food arrived and Delia wondered aloud if a dress the colour of her vivid egg yolk might not suit Evie. Evie laughed and shook her head, looking up to see their waitress standing at the door just behind Delia, deep in conversation with a local bobby. The policeman had popped in to grab what looked like a sandwich, parcelled up in paper, but something in the urgency of his manner made her stop and listen in closer, tuning out Delia.

‘… don’t know what the world’s coming to,’ the waitress was saying, holding out the bag.

‘Not the sort of thing you expect round here,’ the policeman agreed. ‘Something’s changed, and not for the better.’ He glanced at Evie as he spoke, his face flushing crimson as she held his gaze. He grabbed his paper bag and left with a nod to the waitress.

‘… and of course even bloody Mildred’s waltzing round on the arm of a chap these days,’ continued Delia, oblivious to Evie’s wandering attention. ‘Jack flipping Bent of all people.’

‘You wouldn’t want to be stepping out with him though, would you?’ Evie turned back to her friend. ‘Nothing much going on between them dirty ears of his.’ It was Evie’s turn to wrinkle her nose.

‘But there’s been no one decent since Lennie,’ Delia complained.

‘Really? You’re saying that man’s name in the same sentence as the word “decent”?’ Evie laughed. ‘You could do so much better, Dee. You’ll see, I bet you, tomorrow night you’ll be batting them away. And if not you can come backstage, meet the band.’ She said it as a joke but regretted it immediately.

‘Oh no, no penniless musicians for me, thank you,’ Delia said, before quickly looking down at her yolk-smeared plate. ‘I mean, Lawrie’s one of a kind, ain’t he? He’s got a proper job, not just scraping by playing a few tunes.’

‘Everything all right?’ The waitress came to clear their plates and broke the awkward silence that had descended upon the two friends.

‘Lovely thank you,’ Evie told her, remembering what she’d overheard. ‘Excuse me, sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but that policeman who was just in – did I hear him say that there’s been a murder?’

The waitress leaned down to speak in a hushed voice. ‘They found a baby drowned in one of the ponds on Clapham Common. Terrible, ain’t it?’

The girls nodded, wide-eyed, and the waitress carried off their empty plates.

‘Who’d do such an awful thing?’ Evie exclaimed, as Delia pulled a packet of Player’s cigarettes and a box of matches from her bag. ‘I suppose it’ll be in the papers tomorrow.’ She took the cigarette that was offered.

‘People shouldn’t be allowed to have children if they aren’t willing to do what’s best for them.’ Delia struck a match forcefully and held it out.

‘Maybe some people don’t have a choice.’ Evie leaned into the flame, inhaling deeply.

‘I don’t believe that. Most of us know to do what’s best. You know that.’ Delia blew a smoke ring, thinking it over. ‘That place is still open, isn’t it? Where your mother went.’

‘I suppose.’ Evie didn’t like to think about what might have happened if her mother had abandoned her there, at the home for unmarried mothers just off Clapham Common, not far from where this poor mite had been found. ‘Either way, they deserve to suffer, whoever’d do that to a child,’ she said finally.

As they packed up their things and prepared to head back to the office, Delia slid the topic of conversation back to the more pleasant territory of fashion. They decided to go along to Arding and Hobbs before they had to go back to work. Maybe she should think about buying something new to wear to the Lyceum. Lawrie might be working, but it would be their first proper night out together, and Evie wanted to look the part.

3

The room they’d left him in was inhospitable, but he supposed that was the point. Barely bigger than a large cupboard, it was windowless and even colder than outside. Lawrie watched his warm breath swirl like smoke beneath the harsh flickering of the bare fluorescent tube above him. Its relentless blinking made his head ache. The rectangular table before him was empty but for his own hands, fingers splayed across its dull scratched surface and his fingernails full of the same pond mud that coated his trousers and his coat. He wanted to change, to wash away the dirt on his hands that was making him itch. He’d asked for a glass of water but the policeman who’d left him in the room had not replied. Distant male voices could be heard along the corridor and he felt a coward for not going out there and demanding they give him something to drink.

The detective would be in soon. That’s what they’d told him. And it wasn’t like he was under arrest. He’d given a brief account by the side of the pond, his head turned away from that sad bundle on the grass. The constable had asked him to walk back to the station with him and give a full statement. Lawrie hadn’t been able to think of a good enough excuse for not complying.

Eyes open, eyes closed, it made no difference. He could still see that tiny hand and the curl of black hair fixed in his vision, hear the hiccupping sobs of the dog walker. He’d turned away when the foolish constable began to unwrap the blanket that Lawrie had closed up out of respect, staggering back with a yelp as he discovered why the woman was so upset. Served him right for doubting them, but for a moment Lawrie had hoped – had prayed – that he was mistaken. The woman had been allowed to leave once she’d given her brief version of events. She reckoned she hadn’t touched the body, though how she could have seen the baby without doing so, Lawrie didn’t know. He could still feel the weight of the bundle in the muscles that ran up his right arm, could still feel the swift release of that tension as he’d let it fall to the ground.

The door opened. ‘Lawrence Matthews?’ Lawrie nodded as the man entered. ‘Detective Sergeant Rathbone.’

The detective was smartly dressed, his jacket pressed and his dark navy tie neatly knotted. In his thirties, Lawrie guessed, with a narrow moustache and pockmarked cheeks that cried out for a beard. He sat down opposite and placed a manila folder between them. He didn’t look at Lawrie.

Rathbone pulled out a notebook, a packet of cigarettes and his matches, laying them neatly by the folder. He took a cigarette from the pack, not offering one to Lawrie. Striking a match, he sucked the flame into the open tobacco before shaking it out and dropping the spent match to the floor. There was no ashtray, and Lawrie found the careless action irritating, his lips turning upwards a little as he realised how ridiculous it was to bother about such a small thing.

‘What you smiling at?’ Rathbone looked up suddenly.

‘Nothing, sir.’ Lawrie leaned back and swallowed, his throat dry. ‘I just had a silly thought. That you could do with an ashtray.’

Rathbone cupped his hand behind his ear. ‘I can’t make out what you’re saying, son. You’ll have to speak more clearly if you’re going to keep on in that accent.’

‘Yes, sir.’ He slowed the pace of his words, but not too much in case Rathbone thought he was trying to be funny.

The detective pulled a pencil from his jacket pocket. ‘From the beginning then. Since this morning. I want to know exactly what you did, who you saw, everything. I’ll tell you if I want you to stop.’

‘Since this morning?’ Lawrie’s forehead creased as he thought back. ‘I left the house just before five o’clock.’ He paused and Rathbone waved him on. ‘Went to work same as always.’

‘You’re a postman?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Could this man not see the uniform he was wearing? ‘Sir, is there any chance of a glass of water?’

Rathbone arched an eyebrow. ‘Don’t change the subject. I said I’d let you know if I wanted you to stop talking.’

Lawrie blinked. ‘Yes, sir. Well, after I clocked off, around midday, I decided to go for a ride to Clapham Common.’

‘Why there? Why not Brockwell Park, somewhere closer to home?’

‘The sun was out and I thought… well, the Common is where I first stayed when I arrived in this country, see. I like it there.’ His palms were sweating now, thinking about that damned parcel. Guilt must be written all over his face.

Rathbone put down his pencil and looked him directly in the eye for the first time. ‘This all seems rather coincidental, don’t you think? Way I see it, you had no good reason for being by Eagle Pond.’

‘Wrong place, wrong time is all. I mean, do I need a purpose to use the Common? Does anybody?’ Oh God, he was babbling now. ‘Sir, it’s just a park after all. I was just passing by, I go there all the time. At least twice a week.’

Rathbone stared; Lawrie looked away first.

‘It is rather convenient though, you must admit.’ Rathbone tapped ash from his cigarette onto the floor. ‘A baby dies, through some manner or other, to be determined. Perhaps it’s a loved child, perhaps it was an accident or the family couldn’t afford a burial, perhaps at least the person responsible for her death regrets it. That’s what it looks like to me. He doesn’t want her body to go unfound. So he waits until dark before placing her body by the edge of the pond, knowing that people walk their dogs there. Then he starts to worry – what if she isn’t found? He goes back to check and lo! There comes our Mrs—’ Rathbone checked his notes. ‘Barnett. Perfect timing. She panics and, seeing a man on a bicycle, she runs towards him seeking sanctuary. He steps in and rescues the body as planned so it gets a proper burial. Make sense?’

‘The last bit, about her running towards me, yes.’ Lawrie sat up and leaned forward. ‘She was the one who found the…’ His tongue wouldn’t form the word. He’d barely touched the child but he could still feel the slip of its – her – skin against his, the catch of her tiny fingernails as he’d snatched his hand away. ‘You’ve got the woman’s statement right there in front of you. She was there first. She was the one made me go and look.’

‘Because there was no one else there.’ Rathbone fired out the words. ‘No one around but a nigger on a bicycle. You think she’d have gone to you for help if there’d been a single other person around?’

‘I don’t… I mean… what’s that got to do with me?’ Lawrie felt small all of a sudden, unprepared. He took a breath and tried to order his words. ‘I just went there for some fresh air, not looking for trouble.’

‘So when she says that you cycled past the pond once, then again not ten minutes later, you don’t think that seems like odd behaviour?’

‘No! And I did a good thing, helping that woman. I coulda just cycled off, you know? She was acting all hysterical, like a madwoman. And that dog of hers… But I could see there was something very wrong. I stopped to help.’

‘So what? You’re some kind of good Samaritan then?’ Rathbone sneered.

‘My mother brought me up to have good Christian values.’ Lawrie fought the rising wave of humiliation that made his skin prickle. His mother would be horrified if she could see him now.

More notes were made with that sharp pencil. Lawrie tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry; he coughed uncomfortably as his breath caught in his throat.

‘You saw the baby though.’ Rathbone watched him keenly. ‘Definitely one of your lot, wouldn’t you say? Maybe it wasn’t you after all, maybe you were just helping a pal?’

Lawrie looked down as his hands, clenching them together in his lap to stop the shaking. They’d told him he wasn’t under arrest but he couldn’t imagine that the interrogation would be any more severe if he had been. He understood now why they had brought no water to him. He was supposed to be uncomfortable. They thought he was a murderer. At best Rathbone had him down as an accomplice. The air around him felt as thick as the bright yellow custard that Mrs Ryan served up for pudding on Sundays, too dense to breathe properly. Should he just confess? Tell Rathbone about the parcel he’d been delivering? But what if the woman at Englewood Road denied it?

‘You’ve nothing to add?’ Rathbone paused before letting out a weary sigh. ‘If I find out later that you’ve lied, things will go very badly for you, you know?’

‘I’ve told you everything I know.’ Lawrie blinked as more smoke was blown in his direction. Rathbone’s cigarette, together with the nicotine haze hangover from the jazz club the night before, was making his eyes smart. At this rate he may as well take up the habit himself. ‘I don’t know what else I can tell you. Speak to my boss. He’ll tell you that I spent the morning doing my job, not hanging around that pond like a ghoul. Talk to my landlady. I never been married, never had a child.’ Just in time he stopped himself from mentioning Evie. He didn’t want this man going round to the Coleridges’, questioning Evie about him while her disapproving mother looked on. ‘I’m not the only coloured person in London, you know.’

‘You’re speaking too quickly again.’ Rathbone raised his voice. ‘You seem agitated. Why is that?’

‘I’m not agitated, I’m just tired is all.’ He hadn’t slept for over twenty hours and fatigue was dulling his mind. ‘I’m hungry. And thirsty. I been here for hours and not even been given any water to drink.’

‘This ain’t The Ritz, son. We don’t do silver service here.’ Rathbone barked a laugh. ‘Look, you was the only darkie anywhere near the scene of the crime. No good reason for being there.’ Rathbone leaned forward until Lawrie could smell the stale tobacco on his breath, overflowing like a used ashtray. ‘Between you and me, I don’t give two shits about some dead nigger baby. Too many of you around here already, but the law is the law. A suspicious death has to be investigated and someone has to hang for it.’ He let the threat catch in the air before going on. ‘Tell me what I need to know and I can make sure it don’t come to that. I’ll get you a bed. A hot meal. A fresh brew. I tell you something, our cells are far more comfortable than some of them places your lot live in.’

Lawrie felt his chest tighten as his eyes pricked with tears; he would rather die than shed them in front of this man. He thought of his brother; Bennie would never let a man like Rathbone get the better of him.

Rathbone opened his mouth to speak once more but was interrupted by a knock at the door. A younger man entered, also in plain clothes but less senior by the way he held his body as he nodded apologetically at Rathbone, who sighed and stood, following his colleague outside. Lawrie checked his watch again. It would be dark out now. Would the evening papers have printed the story already? What if the police had given his name? Donovan would kill him if they mentioned that he worked for the Post Office. A journalist had already been snooping around outside the police station when Lawrie propped his bicycle up against the wall of the building, hoping that the location was enough insurance against it being nicked. The reporter had been too focused on firing questions at the constable to have really looked at Lawrie, but that had been hours ago now. Plenty of time for someone to let a name slip.

‘Looks like you can go.’ Rathbone reappeared, his face barely moving as he spoke. ‘But don’t think this is the end of it. I’ll be seeing you soon enough, I expect.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Lawrie stood and made for the door before the detective could change his mind. Whatever had gone on outside that interview room, it had not pleased Rathbone.

A uniformed constable showed him to the spot where his bicycle had been moved to, dumped on its side in the yard at the back of the police station. Even in the dim dusk light he could see the slashes in the tyres without having to bend down. A glance over his shoulder showed Rathbone and the younger detective watching him out of the lit window. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of a reaction.

He pulled his scarf up around his freezing ears and began to walk with his bicycle towards the main road, some sixth sense slowing him as he reached the corner, just in time to pull back. The journalist of earlier had multiplied into a huddled pack, puffing away on their cigarettes as they watched the front door of the police station. The bicycle wobbled beside Lawrie as he made a detour, discovering new streets that were both unknown to him and yet sadly familiar. Terraced houses with the occasional shocking rubble-filled gap. During the day these were children’s playgrounds, the bombed-out buildings becoming forts and castles. Dens full of hidden treasure. In the darkness they were macabre ghosts of London’s recent past.

Lawrie stopped off at a corner shop and bought a bottle of ginger beer. He’d be late for tea and Mrs Ryan would wonder what kept him. Evie too, when she arrived home from work before him. The thought of having to relive the whole experience again, seeing their faces fall in horror and pity, drained the energy from his legs.

He kept on going for the best part of an hour, but only three streets from home he wasn’t sure he could make it. There was an alleyway on his right and he managed to bump the bicycle along the broken cobbles, shouldering open a wooden gate that was only half on its hinges, given up since it no longer had a house to guard. What had once been someone’s backyard was overgrown with weeds and Lawrie slumped down into them, his back resting against the brick wall that still stood. A loose brick and a hard smack removed the bottle top, a helpful trick that Aston had taught him. The ginger beer burned his throat but it was a comforting fire, warm and familiar, and the sugar punched him in the face, waking him from his daze. He belched and wiped his mouth.

The skeleton of the house clung upright to the air, glass and debris littering the ground around him. The outhouse had survived almost intact, though its wooden door had decayed. Lawrie could see the porcelain bowl, the half-light of the distant moon glancing off its curves. This was a city marked by death, the darkness finally catching up with him. Everywhere you walked in London you could see tragedy through absence: construction sites that had sprung up to replace the missing homes, the widows who looked older than their years, that missing generation of men that had forced a desperate government to send their mayday overseas. Lawrie was only in the country because of the misfortune of others. He’d thought he was coming to help, same as Bennie had. ‘Doing his bit,’ as they said here.

The English just got on with life as if this was normal. Stiff upper lip, put on a brave face and pretend that if you can ignore the horrors of the past and think only of the future, then you too will be all right. This was an island of crazy people.

His mother had encouraged him to leave home but his brother had not warned him. Bennie Matthews had sent weekly letters home from his RAF base, addressed to their mother but always with a coded postscript for his younger brother. Never had he hinted as to what a dour country England was. Those postcards – what a dupe! Buckingham Palace in its pomp and splendour, the brilliant white dome of St Paul’s, the famous Tower Bridge sitting regal beneath bright blue skies that could have been painted on. Bennie was a real-life hero, posting his tales of derringdo, camaraderie and local dances before flying back across the Channel to save the Motherland. He’d never said a bad word about the country he’d died trying to save.

Lawrie tipped the last few drops of liquid onto his tongue, laid his head in his hands, and sobbed until his ribs ached. The sky was clouded over in a reddish-brown smog, not a star in sight to wish upon, but he closed his eyes and prayed. He wanted to go home. That was it, a simple statement that he’d denied for so long because home, as he had known it, no longer existed.

He regained control and wiped his face, dampening the corner of his handkerchief with spit just as his mother had done when he was a little boy, hoping that evidence of his weakness would not be apparent to anyone when he got home. It was late, and he made his way carefully, keeping to the warren of alleyways before going in through the back gate of Mrs Ryan’s house.

‘Where on earth have you been, love?’ His landlady called from the kitchen, opening the back door for him. ‘I left a plate in the oven for you if you want it? You must be starving. Spam fritters and spuds.’

‘Long story.’ He propped the useless bicycle up against the wall and left his boots outside by the door. He rested his forehead on the cold bricks of the outside wall until he felt composed, then went in.

The meal was coming to an end, Arthur and Derek sitting there with plates that were empty but for the grease stains. Arthur was caught up in the full flow of conversation and Lawrie was grateful to slink past them all without attracting any attention. He hung his coat up in the hall and took his time about returning to the warm kitchen.

‘I tell you quite honestly, Mrs Ryan,’ Arthur was saying as he entered, ‘I ain’t never been so insulted. Not in all my life.’

Arthur shook his head vigorously to emphasise his point. Usually Lawrie would be fighting back a smile, since Arthur took offence to something or someone at least once a week; twice last Tuesday alone. God only knew why the man had bothered to leave Trinidad when he seemed so miserable in London. Lack of funds seemed to be the only reason he was still here. In his forties, Arthur never spoke about his long dead wife, and Lawrie only knew of her existence through Mrs Ryan: landlady, matriarch and confidante – as long as you didn’t mind your secrets being shared within the boundary of her four walls.

‘So what did you say to him?’ Mrs Ryan asked, as she placed the teapot in the centre of the solid wood table that dominated her kitchen. She smiled at Lawrie, nodding to the cooker. ‘Sit down, love.’

‘What did I say?’ Arthur continued. ‘I say nothing. What else can I say? That man knows he can say whatever he likes to me. I say just one single word back to him, I’m out the door ’fore I can get my coat and hat on. He talks to me like I’m an imbecile ’cause he knows I just got to stand there and take it.’

‘What happen now?’ Lawrie asked Arthur, pouring himself some tea and cupping his hands around the mug.

‘My father would have beat me half to death, I even dared to think what this fella say to me.’ Arthur got into his stride. ‘I mean, is this what they teach children in this country? To give cheek to their elders ’stead of respect?’

‘Not in my day,’ Mrs Ryan agreed, placing a warm plate in front of Lawrie.

‘You should offer to kick the shit out of him,’ Derek advised, fitting a filter-less cigarette into his mouth. ‘I’ll give you a hand if you fancy teaching anyone a lesson.’

‘Derek!’ His mother nodded towards the large crucifix that watched over them from the wall opposite, brought over on the boat from Cork not quite twenty years before, though they all went to the local C of E these days.

‘Self-employed’ was how Derek described himself. A businessman. He ran a stall on Brixton Market and at least half his income was legit. A spiv, Evie called him, and Lawrie could see that he looked the part. His luxuriant moustache was as styled as his hair, worn parted on the side and greased down. He wore more cologne than was welcome; it made Lawrie’s nostril hairs twitch.

Don’t trust him, Evie had warned Lawrie. He’ll say he’s doing you a favour but he’ll ask for double in return.

He wasn’t so bad, Lawrie had decided, and there had been benefits to living with a petty criminal. Derek was generous enough to share his ill-gotten gains. A whole extra block of cheese last week, a pound of bacon the week before. Arthur and Lawrie usually went halves on their monthly bottle of rum, which Derek gave them a good price on. They were still one of the few houses on the street to have a telephone installed, a lifesaver for Lawrie. A last-minute booking could only be accepted if the club could actually get hold of you. And, of course, running deliveries for Derek was adding to Lawrie’s savings. He had almost enough saved up for a small wedding and a honeymoon – Mrs Ryan had reckoned on him needing seventy pounds plus a bit extra for spends. Except that because of Derek, Lawrie had been on Clapham Common at the worst time possible and he couldn’t marry Evie if he was sent to gaol. Or the gallows.

The fritters had gone hard in the heat of the oven, their undersides wet with grease that turned Lawrie’s stomach. He tried to force down some of the mashed potato instead, washing it down with hot tea.

‘Well, I heard something scandalous,’ Mrs Ryan announced. ‘I was at the butcher’s earlier, trying to get a bit of beef so we can have a decent roast this Sunday. But no, they’d run out they told me. I tell you, I swear they keep back the good stuff. He’s a mason, Fred Yorke, you know. I wouldn’t be surprised if the best cuts go to his little friends from down the lodge. Them and their funny handshakes…’

‘I tried to join once,’ Derek reminded her. ‘Bastards blackballed me. Can you believe the cheek of it?’

Lawrie could well believe it but he kept his mouth shut.

‘While I was queuing, there were two women in front of me. Talking about a body being found up on Clapham Common. In one of the ponds. A child! And one of them had the ridiculous notion that it might have been there since the war. Kept hidden by the weeds. You do hear of it, people clearing away the rubble and finding people buried beneath, but not a child. The parents would have been going wild! Though the woman was ever so snooty with me when I pointed that out to her.’

‘It wasn’t a child. It was a baby.’ Lawrie’s voice sounded strange in his own ears, as though someone else was speaking through him.

‘A baby? You heard about it on your rounds then?’

‘No.’ He tried to smile, wanting to reassure her, but his lips trembled and he pressed them together until they stilled. They’d find out soon enough. Better it came from him. ‘I found it. I found the baby. In the pond.’

Mrs Ryan stared at him oddly, as if she was struggling to comprehend his words. ‘Dear God.’ She looked to the crucifix and crossed herself. ‘Lawrie, you poor love! So is that why you’re so late home?’

‘I had to give a statement to the police and you know what they’re like.’ He tried once more to smile, still not entirely successfully. ‘I was just glad to get out of there in time. I need to be in Soho for eight o’clock.’

‘What? No, you can’t, Lawrie. You’ve had a terrible shock and you’ve not slept since yesterday. You can’t possibly go and play tonight. Your mother would never forgive me for letting you out in this state.’

Mrs Ryan was a similar age to his mother and they shared several things in common: both widows, regular churchgoers, recovering slowly from a war that had left their families irreparably damaged. They exchanged letters frequently, a few thousand miles of ocean unable to prevent them from finding a sympathetic friend in one another.

‘I have to. Johnny’s expecting me. I’ll see Evie and then head out. I should be home by midnight so it’s not all bad.’ And then up at half four again to serve the Post Office. ‘Besides, it’s better to keep busy. Stop me thinking about it.’

‘I don’t know how you do it, I really don’t.’ Mrs Ryan shook her head. ‘Well, at least clear your plate first. A good meal’ll sort you out. Gosh, what a shock! You just never know what each day will throw at you.’

With that he had to agree. The only thing he did know for certain was that playing his clarinet, immersing himself in music for a few hours, would take his mind away from the day’s events. He just couldn’t dispel the prodding fear that he was going to be facing DS Rathbone again. This wasn’t the sort of thing that went away with only slashed tyres to show for it.

Extract from the Clapham Observer – Monday 21st June 1948

‘WELCOME HOME!’: SONS OF EMPIRE DRAW CLOSE TO THE MOTHERLAND

Today, 492 men, women and children, from Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean, will land at Tilbury in Essex, setting foot on British soil for what, for some, will be the first time. Others are returning from leave to rejoin our armed forces after fighting for their mother country during the most recent war. In preparation, the Evening Standard sent up a plane to greet them yesterday as their ship, the Empire Windrush, entered the Thames: ‘Welcome Home!’ its banner proclaimed.

What is unclear yet is where these men, for it is understood that the majority of the passengers are men of working age, are to be housed. The Colonial Office were unwilling to talk to this newspaper but an unofficial rumour indicates that a number of new arrivals are to be bussed to the Clapham area. Government officials appear to be unsure exactly why these men have been allowed to travel when no plans have been put in place for them. The Ministry of Labour has assured concerned MPs that all men who are not already bound for Air Force, Army or the mines will be interviewed and assisted in finding work. Suitable accommodation will be provided for them until they are in a position to find their own.

A Lambeth council representative had this to say: ‘It is my understanding that these men are British subjects, invited here to help rebuild our great nation. Let the people welcome them into our community and be grateful that Lambeth has been chosen to benefit from a few more good, strong pairs of hands.

1948

Lawrie waited patiently, leaning against the rough brick of the pillbox wall and trying to look as though he belonged. He occupied his time by watching the people walking past, staring down the curious glances of the pale-faced Clapham locals as he tried once more to calculate how far his money would go until he found work. If the bus was four pence from here to Coldharbour Lane, then how many journeys could he make until he was broke? How much would he have to pay out for rent, and how much was a loaf of bread? Not to mention the expense of clothing. He was all right for now but once the seasons changed he’d freeze to death unless he invested in jumpers. He was already cold.

They called this summer because they knew no better. God help him when winter did come; he was shivering in the sunlight. People hurried along in their coats, umbrellas in hand, hats firmly pushed down and pinned into hairdos that had never been vexed by humidity like his mother’s each Sunday as she fixed it up for church. Lawrie wore both the new jumpers she’d bought him as a leaving present, the arms of his jacket tight, unused to the bulk. He had thought of buying a scarf earlier in the day, only the shop assistant had made him feel anxious as he followed him around Menswear. Just as well.

Almost all of his savings, thirty pounds, had been spent on his ticket to England. On the dockside his mother had waved him off, pretending that it was a sneeze that sent tears scattering down her cheeks. As the boat was tugged away, he’d already had second thoughts, looking down into the water and knowing he was quite capable of swimming that short distance back to dry land. But then Aston had slung a loose arm around his shoulders and suggested they both go below deck and seek out some entertainment, by which Aston mainly meant gambling and drinking. If there had been more than a handful of women on board he’d have meant them too.

Here was the man now, Aston, his jaunty walk unmistakeable as he came out of the tube station, pausing to light his cigarette. Lawrie lifted a hand in greeting as his friend crossed the road.

‘Where you been all day, man? I just come from the labour exchange and Moses said you never showed your face.’

Lawrie jabbed his right thumb upwards, indicating his injured eye, now swollen and ripe, a nasty cut below. ‘I won’t get me a decent job looking like this. I can leave it a day or two, go down there when I don’t look like trouble.’

‘Up to you, only don’t be complaining if you end up cleaning out toilets or some such low-paid nonsense. You gon’ miss out on all the good jobs,’ Aston warned. He took a lengthy pull on his cigarette, as if he was trying to inhale all its nicotine in one lungful, then dropped it beneath his foot. ‘Let’s go. The boys are heading out into town tonight and I need to change me shirt.’

Lawrie had no intention of going out drinking again, not after the night before, but he followed his friend to the entrance of the shelter. He hated the place, hated that they’d been shoved down into the bowels of the city, unexpected guests that no one knew what to do with. His mother had said that Britain was an orderly place, that everything ran like clockwork compared to back home, but from what he had seen, this country was anything but organised. A plane had greeted them as they sailed up the Channel, Lawrie and his friends crowding onto the deck to look up in wonder. He had thought it an impressive gesture, excitement growing, until they’d arrived in Tilbury the next day to discover that nothing was ready for them.

One hundred and eighty steps led them down, a twisting helter-skelter; it could have been the entrance to Hell and he’d not have felt more terrified. It was getting easier, though. The day before, the first night down there, Aston had abandoned him, frustrated by Lawrie’s slow two-footed progress as he clung to the railing, men flowing around him like a stream around a rock, the babbling of water replaced by the kissing of teeth. He still felt relieved when they reached the bottom, trying to forget about the tonnes of earth above his head and the rumble of the tube trains that passed close by, bringing commuters back from the city at the end of the working day.

The woman they’d nicknamed Rita Hayworth was carrying a pile of clean sheets along the corridor as they walked towards Fremantle, humming a popular song that he knew would be stuck in his head for hours. All the bunk rooms were named for naval captains, laid out like they were still at sea. Her heels clipped the concrete floor and he could barely see her face over the tower of linen.

‘What on earth happened to you?’ she asked, seeing Lawrie’s eye.

‘Oh.’ Lawrie touched his wound gingerly. ‘This? You’ll think badly of me.’

‘You were fighting?’

‘Sort of.’ He looked at Aston who shrugged and began to walk away. ‘More like I got hit and didn’t get back up. I wasn’t expecting it though, the fella caught me by surprise. Mistook me for Aston. Since we all look the same…’

She looked him up and down: half a foot taller than her, lean and clean shaven. Then she looked over at the departing figure of Aston who was stocky with a neat ’tache. ‘But you look nothing alike.’

‘No,’ Lawrie agreed, his face brightening into a wide grin. She blushed as she realised he’d been joking. ‘The fool who hit me could barely stand, let alone see who he was hitting. I’m embarrassed, tell the truth, getting knocked over by a drunk.’

‘What had Aston done to him?’

‘Talking too much, as usual. To the girl behind the bar. This fella decided he didn’t much like it is all.’

‘And you took his punishment.’ She nodded. ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch your name?’

‘Mine? Lawrie.’ He shook the hand she held out from beneath the sheets. ‘Sorry, miss, I should be helping you with that load you got.’

‘Call me Rose.’ She let him take the bundle from her. ‘If you could just pile them up over there. When I’ve finished later on I can take a look at that eye if you want. I’m not a nurse but we’ve got a first aid kit. You need that cut cleaning properly.’

Lawrie smiled and left her to it, dumping the sheets where she’d indicated before finding Aston, already on his bunk and reading that evening’s Standard.

‘What’s news?’ Lawrie climbed up to the bunk above.

‘Maybe I should be asking you that.’ His head poked out, grinning up at his friend.

‘I was just being friendly.’

‘Yes, well you shoulda checked her left hand first. You too late, my friend. But in more general news rain is forecast for tomorrow. Though that is an everyday state of affairs in this country, I must warn you. Buy an umbrella, you’ll get some use out of it.’

Lawrie’s head was beginning to ache as he rested it down upon a pillow that was barely thicker than a folded piece of cardboard. Damn that fool Aston, getting him into strife before they’d been a full day on dry land. He’d known as soon as they’d walked into that pub that it was a bad idea. They weren’t welcome, no matter what that newspaper article said.

Sonny stopped by. ‘You comin’ out tonight, boys?’

Aston laughed. ‘You only just met me?’

‘No thank you,’ Lawrie replied. ‘I had enough excitement last night.’

‘Boy, don’t be like that. Come on out. We goin’ to Soho. Johnny say there might be work there. They lookin’ for musicians.’ Sonny reached up and poked Lawrie in the side, making him squirm.

‘You serious? He’s still on about forming a band?’ Lawrie sat up.

Sonny shrugged. ‘Worth a look. If not then we go back to the labour exchange tomorrow, nothing lost.’

It was tempting. To earn a living from playing music… well, it was a dream that Lawrie had never thought might come true.

‘Let me get my eye fixed up first but yes, then I’ll come.’

‘No problem.’ Sonny winked as he saw Rose walking towards them. ‘Man, I wish I get punched in the face if I get a woman like that tending to me.’

Lawrie ignored their sniggers and followed Rose into the first aid station, set up in what had been a makeshift infirmary during the war. Rose told him this as she sat him down on a wooden stool, turning to grab her standard issue first aid kit.

‘Did you come down here then?’ he asked. ‘During the bombing?’

‘No. We were living on the other side of the Common back then. We had our own shelter out the back, before we got bombed out. Not a direct hit, thank goodness.’ She tilted his head up to the light. ‘Did you make any attempt to clean this? It’s a right mess.’

‘A little.’ His head had been throbbing and it had been so late when they’d arrived back the night before that even the rickety bunk had been too enticing. A splash of cold water after using the lavatory had been the extent of it.

‘You could have fooled me. Hold still.’ She held onto his head as she applied iodine to the cut.

‘Jesus Christ!’ That innocent ball of cotton wool felt like a poker straight out of the fire. ‘What the hell is that?’

‘Language! My mother would have given you a right piece of her mind if she’d heard you talking like that.’

‘Mine too,’ he admitted. He took a deep breath and held it as Rose carried on, making sure that the wound was clean before releasing him.

‘So where were you last night?’ she asked. ‘Not round here surely.’

‘Yes, actually. Just in that pub down the road, on the left.’

‘I know the one. What did the man look like? The one who punched you.’ She dabbed cool cream on his eye, the chill of it making him jump once more.

He thought about it for a moment. ‘Shorter than me but not by much. Dressed pretty smart. Black hair. Sort of like Cary Grant in The Philadelphia Story. And he wore a ring on his right pinkie. That’s what cut me.’

‘Cary Grant, eh?’ She busied herself tidying the supplies away. ‘I don’t know about him but there’s quite a few chaps with dark hair round here.’

‘True,’ he agreed. ‘And you lot all look the same to me.’

She laughed. ‘Yes, well, I shall remember that when you walk past me in the street next week and don’t give me a second glance.’

‘As if that could happen!’ Was he flirting with her? He’d never been much good at it before but she was smiling. Maybe some of Aston’s charm was rubbing off on him.

‘Have you found anywhere to live? After you leave here, I mean?’

‘Not yet. I need to find a job first.’

‘What job did you have back home?’

‘Nothing. I mean, I was studying.’ He glanced up at her, wondering if she thought him just a child. He wasn’t sure how old she was. Probably older than his nineteen years if she was married. ‘My mother wanted me to go to university but money was tight so, you know, here I am. Come to London, seeking my fortune.’

Rose giggled. ‘You sound like Dick Whittington. And I’m sorry but these streets are more likely paved with rubble than gold.’

‘I noticed.’ He sighed. ‘Still, a few of the fellas think maybe we can actually get a band together and earn money from it. I play clarinet. My father always wished he’d become a professional musician instead of working in an office. I suppose I’d like to fulfil his dream now that he’s gone.’

‘You’re lucky,’ she told him, ‘to have something like that, something you love. I worked in a factory during the war, believe it or not, and I loved it. We had a right laugh and I felt like I was doing something proper, you know? Something useful. But Frank, that’s my husband, he wanted things to go back to normal when he came home. Married women don’t work, he says, not unless they need the money, it’d look bad on him. He doesn’t even like me doing this only I insisted. So long as his tea’s on the table when he gets home from work I reckon he can’t really complain, and he’s in the pub most nights anyway.’

‘You don’t look old enough to be married, you don’t mind me saying.’

She smiled. ‘No? I suppose not. We got married straight out of school. Frank was heading off to war and we knew there was a chance that…’ Her voice trailed off.

‘You were lucky,’ Lawrie said. ‘He came back.’

‘Yes.’ She took a step backwards, away from him. ‘Anyway, you’re all done. Pop up in ten minutes if you want feeding before you head out. And curfew is midnight so don’t be late back.’

‘Thank you.’ He held out a hand and she shook it.

‘D’you think you’ll stay long?’ she asked. ‘In England, I mean.’

‘I should think so,’ he replied. ‘Don’t you read the paper? This is our home now.’

‘Then welcome home,’ she said.

13th March 1950

Dear Aggie,

I do hope all is well? I just got your letter and I have to say you’ve got me worried about you, darling sister.

If you want my advice, and your letter implied that you did, I think it’s time to let Evie stand on her own two feet. She’s eighteen after all. We weren’t still living at home at her age, were we? And she won’t have it half as bad as you did! She’s got you and that young friend of hers – Delilah or whatever. That boy next door, when’s he going to come good and get down on one knee? You should have a word with him, like Ginny Leyton’s dad did to her young chap years ago. He was down that aisle faster than a whippet round the track at Wimbledon! Of course, nobody would be foolish enough to mess with old Leyton but I reckon you could give him a run for his money.

Besides Evie and all that, how are you? Is everything all right? We shouldn’t leave it so long between visits, you and me. I did love seeing you so last year, both of you, and it does get a bit lonely out here on my own. Who’d have thought I, city girl through and through, would end up living alone at the bottom edge of a Devonshire village? You should come down this summer, stay as long as you want, there’s plenty of room. Don Waters was asking after you when I saw him last. You remember him? Bought you a half a shandy that night we went to the pub?

Anyway, I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Gertie xx

4

Evie had left the kitchen door open so that she could feel the draught if her mother returned earlier than expected. Ma had run out to deliver a dress that she’d taken up for a woman over in Stockwell, so she wouldn’t be long. It wasn’t that Ma was against Lawrie as such; he was allowed to accompany Evie to the Astoria, and they were allowed to go out for a Sunday afternoon stroll in the park, but she’d never allow this, the pair of them huddled so close together that an ant would have struggled to find a path between their bodies.

Lawrie leaned on Evie’s shoulder, his head lolling against hers more out of exhaustion than any amorous intention. She’d never seen him like this, quiet and staring into the distance. Nothing she’d said so far seemed adequate and she felt as though she was just repeating the same inanities over and again.

‘They can’t honestly believe you had anything to do with it. I mean, they don’t have any evidence. Nothing links you to any baby, let alone that poor child. They’re just desperate. They need to look as if they’ve done something. Taken some action.’

‘He didn’t want to let me go,’ Lawrie reminded her. ‘If that other fella hadn’t come in, I reckon I’d still be there, sitting in one of those cells he told me about. It wasn’t his decision, you know. He wasn’t happy about it.’

Evie lit a cigarette and took a deep drag while she tried to think of something better to say.

‘Bad habit.’ Lawrie shook his head as she blew out smoke, though she was careful to angle her breath away from his face.

She grinned. ‘I never had a dad before and I don’t want one now, thank you very much.’

He put his arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him, pushing her nose into the wool of his coat. The wool held the scent of smoky bars and a faint hint of woody cologne that had belonged to a previous owner. He was a gentleman, was Lawrie Matthews. Too much so sometimes. He never made a move on her, was careful where he put his hands even when she could tell that he was holding himself back. ‘Sorry I don’t have much time tonight.’

‘Don’t worry about me. Only you shouldn’t be going out, not when you’ve had such a shock. You look exhausted. Like you could fall asleep standing up.’ She reached up and caressed his jawline; he hadn’t even shaved, which was most unlike Lawrie.

His chuckle was frail, the ghost of a laugh. ‘I wish I could tell Johnny that I’m staying home. If I could, I’d stay here with you. We never seem to get any time to ourselves these days.’

‘What about tomorrow?’ she asked hopefully. ‘Delia and I were talking and it seems ridiculous that we’ve never had a night out at the Lyceum. I know you’re playing, but you’ll have breaks, won’t you? I can come backstage and you can show me around.’

‘Your mother will let you?’

‘I don’t see why not.’ She sounded more confident than she felt.

‘And you’ll tell her that I’ll be there too? I don’t want her to think we’re going behind her back or she’ll not let you out again until we’re married.’

Evie’s heart almost stopped as he reached the end of his sentence. Was she reading too much into a single word? He squeezed her tighter and she threaded her fingers through his and tried not to show him what she was thinking.

‘I think Ma’s decided that she likes you, you know. She asked after you only this morning. I think she just likes to put on a show, making sure we don’t get ahead of ourselves.’

‘Conniving woman.’

‘Just be glad she hasn’t taken against you. If she had then she wouldn’t leave this house without locking me in my bedroom first.’ It was an exaggeration but not far off the truth. Evie had let her mother down before and it had taken months to earn back that trust.

‘She’s not so bad.’

‘She has her moments.’ Evie tilted her head towards his until he got the message and kissed her properly.

‘You think the baby’s mother is someone like yours?’ Lawrie pulled away first, his mind elsewhere. ‘I mean, a woman in a similar predicament, if you know what I mean.’

‘Left holding the baby after some chap’s done a runner? Only maybe she knew better than Ma did and got rid?’

‘Evie, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…’ His face was stricken with remorse.

‘It’s all right.’ She waved his words away as if they didn’t bother her. ‘Everyone else will be thinking the same anyway. It makes sense.’

She’d picked up a Standard on the way home but Lawrie had been able to tell her more than the short, hurriedly filed report. The paper hadn’t divulged that the baby was coloured but they had given an age. Evie had assumed on first hearing that the baby must be a newborn but apparently she – the baby girl – was almost a year old. Someone had cared for her for months before her death, had kept her fed and clothed and probably even loved her. Evie couldn’t imagine what must have come over the person responsible, to suddenly do such a thing. A baby was a precious gift. Not everyone had a choice in the matter, Evie knew, but Ma had coped on her own. And, as Delia had pointed out, there were institutions for babies who couldn’t be cared for at home. None of it made sense.

‘Do you think it could have been an accident? We’re assuming the worst but the baby could just have been ill. Maybe the mother panicked and didn’t know what to do. You said the blanket looked hand-embroidered.’

‘With flowers,’ he confirmed.

‘So somebody cared. Sometimes babies just die and it’s not anybody’s fault.’ Evie’s hand shook a little as she lifted the cigarette to her mouth.

‘What if it was someone we know?’

For so long the only other coloured person Evie had ever known was an intensely serious engineering student from Nigeria who had lived on the next street over when she was fourteen. He’d spoken to her sometimes if they’d been waiting at the bus stop, just chit chat, but she could sense within him the same loneliness she felt, knowing that she didn’t quite fit in. She’d never told him that her father had also been a student, just like he was. She worried that he’d ask her questions and she’d have to admit that her mother refused to talk about him at all.

‘How dark was her skin?’ Evie asked. ‘Darker than mine?’

‘I don’t know. It’s all mixed up in my head. If it weren’t for that Rathbone fella telling me that she was coloured I’d think I’d imagined it. I can’t believe that anyone we know would have done this, can you?’

‘’Course not.’ Evie ground out her cigarette on the step. She’d have to remember to take that in later and hide it in the bin, else Ma would have words. ‘You know, there are plenty of local women who’ve had a little secret flirtation. I mean, look at Aston. How many women have you seen leave on his arm at the end of a night?’

‘Aston? That’d be even worse. An awful lot of fellas round here would not like the idea of one of their women being with one of us darkies.’ His mouth twisted into a grimace as he spat out the slur.

And if anyone knew about that it was Lawrie, Evie thought, suddenly sour. ‘You think there’d be trouble?’

‘Let’s just hope that it turns out like you said and the baby died of measles or some such illness.’ His lips brushed her forehead and she knew he didn’t want to talk about it any longer.

Evie’s grandfather had been in the police, not that she’d ever known him. Ma had gone alone to his funeral and afterwards they’d moved into this house – his house – which had been the Coleridge family home when Ma was a child, before she’d been thrown out for getting pregnant and bringing disgrace upon the family name. Evie had never really understood how a man could choose so easily to cut off his own flesh and blood, but she’d learned to give up asking questions after Ma had told her that if she brought the subject up again, she’d take her down to the graveyard and leave her there by his headstone until she got her answers. Ma did keep one photograph of the man on the mantelpiece, dressed in his full police uniform. His stern expression made her glad she’d not had to meet him. The thought of a man like that going after Lawrie made her feel sick.

She checked her watch. ‘Ma’ll be home soon. Are we just going to sit here talking?’ She placed a hand on his thigh and felt him jump as though burned by her touch. ‘You don’t want to…?’

‘I just – I don’t want you to feel like you have to is all. Not on my account.’

‘Will you ever stop thinking of me as a little girl?’ she snapped, her tone sharper than she intended.

‘I don’t.’

She refused to look at him until he reached over and turned her head gently with his fingertips.

‘I just want to do right by you, Evie, that’s all.’

‘Then stop treating me like I’m made of glass. I won’t break if you touch me. Properly I mean, instead of all this careful patting and stroking. Why do you have to be such a gentleman all the time?’

He kissed her hand and laughed as she rolled her eyes. ‘Why you want to rush everything?’ She kept her mouth shut, forcing him to go on. ‘I just don’t want you to think that I’m only interested in one thing. I messed up before, I know that. I don’t want to lose you again.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I love you, all right? And if we’re going to be together for the rest of our lives then why do we need to hurry?’

‘You love me?’ Her first reaction was to smile, then to laugh. ‘I love you too.’

‘You do?’ Now he was all smiles, leaning forward to kiss her.

There was enough light from next door to see Lawrie’s eyes blacken as he came closer, the hand on her back pulling her into his body as his left hand slipped between the unbuttoned lapels of her wool coat. She opened her mouth to his as his palm brushed against her breast and she began to feel a little light-headed.

Was it wrong to want this? She knew what her mother would say: that she should know better, amongst other choice phrases. But Lawrie was different from other young men; different to anyone else she’d met. He wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want him to. He had asked permission to hold her hand the first time, for goodness’ sake.

The front door banged suddenly, breaking them apart, Lawrie on his feet in seconds. Evie smiled as she watched him leap in one clean motion, his arms pushing him up easily as he vaulted the wall. He allowed a second’s pause as he reached the summit and blew her a kiss. Then he was gone and she heard the creak of Mrs Ryan’s kitchen door as it opened then closed.

‘You been smoking again?’

Evie had to catch herself from falling backwards as her mother whipped the back door open.

‘Sorry, Ma.’ She picked up the butt and stood to throw it in the bin.

‘You will be when you catch a cold. You shouldn’t be sitting out there in this weather.’

A solid woman, thick through the middle and short enough to be called stout, Ma was the very definition of no nonsense. She never bothered with make-up these days and always sniffed whenever Evie wore a little herself, though she did hold her tongue now that Evie was bringing in her own wages. Ma had never married, which was Evie’s fault. She called herself Mrs Coleridge to avoid receiving that look that people, especially women, liked to give her. Of course, once they found out about Evie she did still get that look, but there was nothing to be done about that. Back in their Camberwell days, when she occasionally stepped out with a chap who hadn’t yet found out about her daughter, Agnes Coleridge’s hair had been her crowning glory, thick and curly. Now she kept a shorter, more practical hairstyle, the locks falling no further than her second chin, the ebony losing its battle with the salt.

‘I take it Lawrie was round?’ Ma filled the kettle from the tap.

Evie stared at her mother’s back, not sure if she was in trouble or not. ‘Is that all right? We were only talking.’

‘I do remember what it’s like to be young, you know, and I wasn’t born yesterday. He’s not quite as quick as he thinks he is when it comes to jumping that wall. And you should take a look in the mirror.’ Her mother raised her hand to her chin.

Evie mimicked her action, her cheeks flushing as she felt the irritated skin. Damn Lawrie for not shaving. ‘Sorry, Ma,’ she confessed.

‘I’m sure you know better than to do anything foolish. Nóirín next door seems to think he’s a sensible chap. Got his head screwed on right.’

‘He wouldn’t take advantage if that’s what you mean,’ Evie confirmed. ‘In fact,’ she said, taking a deep fortifying breath, ‘I was wondering if you minded me going to see him play in his band tomorrow night. At the Lyceum. There’ll be lots of people there, and Delia. She’ll be my chaperone, if you like.’

Her mother snorted a laugh. ‘If I was going to choose a chaperone for you then Delia Marson would be at the bottom of that list.’

‘Please, Ma?’

‘Do what you want. You’re old enough. For pity’s sake, Evie, take some responsibility for yourself, won’t you, you’re a grown woman.’

‘Yes. Fine then, so that’s where I’ll be tomorrow night.’

‘Good. Well, since you’ve nothing better to do you can help put away those dishes and then bring me a cup of tea. I’m off to put my feet up.’

Some things didn’t change.

The Friday morning papers shouted of the macabre discovery in the pond, their articles more floridly written now that their intrepid journalists had had time to pry information from the local community – including Gladys Barnett, whose dog had made the initial find. Evie checked three different newspapers on her way to work but she was relieved to find that they hadn’t printed Lawrie’s name.

They had given the baby a name: Ophelia. It was mentioned in more than one paper, as if there’d been a committee meeting held between all the journalists the night before and this was what had been agreed upon. The girl in the pond; the body in the rushes. Only it sounded wrong to Evie’s ears. They must have taken the name from Millais’ work. She’d seen the painting on a school outing to the Tate Gallery, but Hamlet’s Ophelia had been a grown woman, making a choice. This was an innocent baby.

‘You gonna pay for one of them?’ The newsagent had spied her. She chose one at random and handed over the coins.

She was just on time for work, slipping off her coat and hanging it up quickly before grabbing her notepad and pencil and following Delia downstairs. Every morning they headed to the floor below to receive any special instructions from Mrs Jones, their supervisor.

They joined the other partners’ secretaries at the back of the room, Evie noticing more than one of the typing pool girls look her way, whispering amongst themselves. They were talking about the baby – ‘pond’, ‘Clapham Common’, ‘murder’. Did they know more than the papers had printed? Maybe the rumours had begun regardless. What would they be saying once they knew that Lawrie had found the baby? She’d have to tell Delia when they got back up to their own office, safe from the malicious gossipers.

‘I don’t know why anyone’s surprised,’ Mildred said, raising her voice. There was no doubting the target of her attack, not when she was looking right at Evie. ‘My dad says this country’s going to the dogs. If we let in all sorts then we’ve got to expect that things change, and not for the better.’

‘You seem to know a lot about it, Mildred.’ Evie’s voice came out weak and she cleared her throat. Mildred must have been letting her views known before she’d arrived; that was why those girls were staring at her like that.

‘I went to the church service last night and the woman who found her was there.’ Mildred’s face shone with glee. ‘She was telling everyone that they’d arrested one of you lot. A darkie.’

Evie opened her mouth but she didn’t know what she could say without giving Lawrie away. She gripped the edge of the table behind her as her body weakened, panic taking over.

‘So what?’ Delia butted in. ‘They’d’ve questioned anyone who was there, whether they did it or not. It might not have anything to do with him.’

‘Girls!’ Mrs Jones marched in and everyone turned to face the front. ‘Some hush, please.’

Delia put a hand on Evie’s, squeezing it briefly.

Extract from the Evening Standard – Friday 17th March 1950

GRUESOME DISCOVERY ON CLAPHAM COMMON AS BABY FOUND DEAD

More details have emerged regarding the body of a baby that was found yesterday, hidden in the shallows of Eagle Pond, Clapham Common.

The discovery was made by a local woman, whilst walking her dog in the vicinity of the pond. Police have confirmed that the woman is unrelated to the case, and that they are already questioning a person of interest, a man who was discovered close to the scene.

The child has yet to be identified but we are able to disclose that the baby was female, 10-12 months old, and well cared for. It is still unknown whether her death was a consequence of foul play or accident. She was found wrapped in a white woollen blanket with a floral decoration so it is likely that she had a mother who cared for her.

Police ask that anyone who has any information call in at their local police station as soon as possible. If anyone knows of a baby of the right age who hasn’t been seen in a while, or was in the area on the evening of Wednesday 15th March, or the early hours of Thursday 16th, please think carefully – you may have seen something which at the time seemed unimportant but may be vital to the police investigation.

There will be special prayers said for the deceased at both St Mary’s and St Barnabas’s churches again this evening for local parishioners who wish to pay their respects following a generous turn-out yesterday.

5

There were far better ways of spending a Friday evening than waiting on a cold station platform for an unreliable friend. But here he was, freezing his arse off at Waterloo as legions of buttoned-up office workers marched past him on their way home to the suburbs. They all looked the same: harassed and hunched over, their grey overcoats and hats giving the appearance of a national uniform. The shoes were the only clue; the most reliable way to tell boss from employee, the tenant from the landlord. Lawrie’s own dress shoes were polished to a high shine but the soles were not original and the leather was cracked along the throat line.

Aston had rung him up on the telephone on Tuesday. A lifetime ago, it felt like. Few more days and I’m a free man! Thing is, I need somewhere to stay… And how could Lawrie say no? Aston had served in the RAF since 1942, side by side with Lawrie’s brother until that last fatal mission, just weeks before the war ended. But of course, Aston was late. He hadn’t been on the train he should have been on which meant that he’d missed it, probably ’cause he’d got chatting to some pretty girl on his way to the station, and they’d both have to wait for the next. As usual. Lawrie checked his watch; he still had time.

He felt a debt to Aston, not least because it was one of Aston’s RAF contacts who had finally managed to get Lawrie his Post Office job. It had been Aston who had come down to Kingston two years earlier and talked Lawrie on to that boat, convinced Mrs Matthews that it was a wise idea to send her remaining son overseas where he could seek his fortune. She’d cried as she waved her surviving son off but she had a new husband to look after her now. Lawrie had only been in the way, Mr Herbert from the grocery store leaping at the chance to comfort the handsome widow as she grieved for her eldest son. How well it all worked out in the end, the new Mrs Herbert wrote to her son months later, taking his good news missives at their word.

The ship had been full of men seeking their fortunes, many of them having fought in the war just like Bennie and Aston, escaping the island life that was too quiet now that they’d experienced adventures across Europe and beyond. Why bother gambling with your life if all you did with your winnings was put it into the small farm that you could have had anyway, just by staying at home? Like Aston, they’d seen the advert in the Gleaner – cheap tickets back to the Motherland – and jumped at the chance to return. There was safety in accepting the embrace of the depleted British armed forces, crying out for men who’d already been trained up.

Walking the deck and breathing in air that was as salty as the unfathomable ocean beneath him, Lawrie had listened to tales of big houses, pretty girls, the wages even the most menial of jobs paid. He’d expected to arrive in the country of his schoolbooks, to walk the wide thoroughfares he’d seen on newsreels and have conversations, perhaps in a real English pub, with people who spoke like they did on the wireless. It would kill his mother if she ever found out how the English actually lived. Eating spam and shopping with coupons; living in bomb-damaged houses. It would destroy her if she could see her only living son now, if she knew that the police suspected him to be involved in the murder of a baby. She could never find out.

The next train pulled in and he watched the passengers pour out of the doors. He waited until the last old man hobbled off, no Aston in sight, and was about to give up when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

‘Fancy seein’ you here.’ Aston looked smart in his demob suit, kitbag in hand, newspaper wedged under his arm and a smile on his face.

‘What the…’ Lawrie looked around him. ‘What train you come on?’

‘Came in over there.’ Aston pointed vaguely to his right. ‘We got time for a drink? I’m parched.’ He put on a hoarse voice.

‘Then you shoulda got here earlier. I got no time, not even for a quick one before you ask.’

‘What’s up with you?’

‘Nothin’.’ Worried that the police would come back and question him. Exhausted from not sleeping. ‘I just got a lot to think about at the moment.’

‘Lyceum, right?’

Lawrie nodded.

‘Good-looking women there, I remember rightly.’

Aston was what Evie referred to as a ladies’ man when she was in a good mood, an alley cat when he annoyed her, which was often.

‘You was so drunk the last time you could barely stand. How you remember a thing?’ Lawrie reminded him. Last time had been New Year’s Eve and he’d had to throw himself off the stage mid-song to stop Aston from getting punched by some fella who’d taken against Aston dancing with his girl.

‘Never forget a thing, boy. The women, they call me the elephant.’

Lawrie rolled his eyes and groaned.

‘Get your mind out the gutter! It’s ’cause I never forgot a pretty face.’ Aston laughed and clapped his friend’s shoulder hard so that Lawrie winced. ‘Talking of which, how’s your girl?’

‘She got a name and I know you know it.’

‘I apologise sincerely. How is Miss Evelyn Coleridge, might I ask?’ Aston put on his best English accent and they both laughed as they negotiated their way across the concourse towards the exit, the crowds around them watching the departures board intently, waiting for it to announce their passage out of the city. A few commuters turned to see who these chaps were who dared to be so carefree and loud. ‘We walkin’?’

‘’Less you feel flush enough for a taxi – ’cause I do not.’

They emerged from the station. Seven o’clock on a March evening and the skies over the city didn’t even have the decency to turn black at night, the stars staying away in protest.

‘Evie is well, thanks for asking. She’s coming to the Lyceum tonight so behave yourself when you see her. She might even start to think better of you.’

‘I doubt that.’ Aston’s words were mumbled as he tried to light a cigarette, his head bent to the match sheltered between his cupped palms.

‘Well, you can at least try. You never know when a person gonna change their mind. I thought Evie’s mother couldn’t stand me but apparently she decided I’m not so bad.’

Aston snorted. ‘That woman’s a dragon, guarding she daughter like she’s some fairy tale princess. Must be gettin’ to realise no white fella’ll marry the girl so she make do with a light skin boy like you.’

‘Why you make everything an insult?’ Lawrie elbowed his friend in the side.

‘Just saying how things is,’ Aston corrected him. ‘Mrs Coleridge sees some dark skin bastard like me go near her daughter, she’d lock her away ’til the end of time. Man, she would never let me cross her threshold ’less she had a knife ready to cut me man parts off. You, on the other hand, are the educated son of a government man, or whatever your papa was. You got a steady job. Perfect son-in-law.’

‘Steady job? Keeping hold of it’s all I can manage these days.’

Aston acted like Lawrie had it so easy but, until now, he’d only ever known the RAF, had been safe in his barracks, insulated from real life. He’d not yet had to sit in those interviews with some shoddy-looking fella looking him up and down as he decided without even bothering with the CV, or asking a single question, that this nigger before him would not be working in his establishment.

‘You work too hard, boy. You all right for money?’

‘Fine. I been doin’ some extra deliveries for Derek, you know?’ He knew that Aston felt a responsibility towards him, though he wished sometimes that he didn’t. Sometimes he just wanted to be left alone, to get on with things his own way without Aston or Mrs Ryan or anyone else feeling like they needed to intervene.

‘All right. But you just say the word if you need anything.’

A light drizzle began to fall as the men crossed the road and turned onto Belvedere Road. Lawrie pulled up his collar as they walked the dingy damp street that ran parallel to the Thames, the beginnings of the new Royal Festival Hall blocking the view to the river. Each time he passed, he had to wonder at the vast building site that was slowly transforming into a great beast of a concert hall. It beggared belief that they would leave people without proper houses to live in and spend a fortune on a so-called festival, as if people could come and dance themselves out of strife and not worry that they were still having to use ration books and make do.

They climbed the steps up onto Waterloo Bridge as raindrops landed on Lawrie’s cheeks like saltless tears. Back home when it rained he had liked to stand outside and let it baptise him, the water cleansing, rejuvenating. English rain made him feel grubby, falling from that filthy sky, its dank grime sinking into his skin until he felt contaminated.

‘You ever goin’ tell me what is the matter?’ Aston said, breaking the silence.

Aston would find out soon enough. Lawrie wiped his face with his hand and forced himself to speak, recounting the events of the past two days to his dumbstruck friend.

The Lyceum was still fast asleep when they arrived via the stage door. Aston dumped his bag on a rickety wooden table in the green room and sat down with a sigh. They were the first to arrive, the other band members cutting it fine as usual. The Johnny Sands Band they were called. This was their regular Friday night slot and they usually had at least one booking on a Saturday as well. It had taken a while to build their reputation but Johnny had ambition, as well as an eldest son back in Jamaica who he wanted to bring over when funds allowed.

Telling Aston had lifted a weight, and while the shadow of his macabre discovery still loomed over him, Lawrie already felt better. He always enjoyed playing this dance hall. Although the audiences in the poky Soho clubs were more appreciative of his talent, he felt immersed in the history of this old theatre, part of something that had existed long before his time and would continue on long after. He could imagine the ghosts of Shakespearean thespians and beautiful opera sopranos who used to draw the crowds. Maybe one day people would recall hearing Lawrie Matthews at the Lyceum. He’d happily give up his job tramping the south London streets if he could make a decent living from music but chance would be a fine thing. Of all of them, only Johnny was getting by as a musician. His wife, Ursula, worked in a factory five days a week while Johnny looked after their two young offspring. She was home by four, and then off went Johnny. He could play the piano as well as sing – hotel bars paid his wages on the nights when the band wasn’t playing. But there wasn’t much call for a solo clarinettist and no one would pay to hear Lawrie sing. He could hold a tune all right, but Johnny had that rich tone to his voice that made people close their eyes as they listened, letting his voice sink into their souls like butter melting on toast. Lawrie would have been embarrassed to get up before an audience and be mediocre.

Aston reached into his bag. ‘Got any glasses?’ He pulled out a bottle of Scotch. ‘I reckon we could both do with a little pick-me-up.’

At the back of the room was an ancient cast iron sink, five mismatched mugs drying on the side. Lawrie chose the two least tannin-stained, and handed them to Aston who poured two fingers of whisky into each.

‘To a new life in London.’ Aston raised his drink, Lawrie doing the same.

‘Cheers.’

They clinked their mugs together and drank, the fumes burning the hairs in Lawrie’s nostrils before the heat hit the back of his throat.

‘So this all happen yesterday, right? You had any more trouble today?’ Aston asked, not ready to change the subject. ‘The cops, I mean.’

‘Not a word. Nothing new in the papers either, I checked.’ Lawrie’s hands had trembled as he tried to turn the pages of the newspaper that morning, expecting any moment to see his name printed there in black, sweat lifting the ink from the paper onto his fingertips. ‘It’s strange, they still never mentioned that the baby was coloured.’

Aston shrugged and lit another cigarette. ‘Maybe they’re worried about vigilantes. Don’t we know at least one fella would like an excuse to take matters into his own hands?’

‘You think there’ll be trouble? ’Cause it’ll get out at some point. Can’t see how it won’t.’

‘Almost certainly. You better watch your step. They get desperate to tie someone to this, you’re the obvious choice, ’less they know a lot more than they’re letting on.’ Aston leaned over and refilled Lawrie’s mug. ‘Your boss know?’

Lawrie nodded. At work that morning he’d gone straight to Donovan and told him everything that had happened the day before. Arthur had suggested it was better to come clean, even though Lawrie hadn’t technically been on duty at the time. He’d still been wearing his uniform and it wasn’t out of the question that Rathbone might go sniffing around his place of work, asking after Lawrie. Donovan’s lips had pressed so tightly together as he listened that they’d vanished entirely into his chubby face. None of it had happened during his shift but he could see in his boss’s narrowed eyes that he had no room to mess up from now on.

‘You think that Rose could—’

‘No!’ Lawrie snapped the syllable, surprising himself.

‘I not sayin’ you would—’ Aston stopped talking as they heard voices echo along the corridor.

‘You here already?’ Johnny walked in first, taking his role as band leader seriously. He was a smooth talker, five years older than Lawrie.

‘Just about.’ Lawrie greeted Moses and Sonny as they came in, shaking hands with Aston.

They’d formed the band right after arriving in London, though they’d run through a few changes of personnel since. Moses and Sonny were always together; drums and a double bass required transportation and a portion of the band’s earnings was always allocated to keeping Moses’s rusty old van on the road. Al was the current fifth member, on trumpet.

‘I should go. Head out front to where the action is.’ Aston winked.

‘See you later?’

‘Perhaps, but if I disappear it only means I got lucky. ’Sides, it might be wiser to steer clear of Evie. You know I only put she in a temper.’

‘What is it with you two?’

Aston walked off without answering.

Lawrie had never been able to fathom a reason for this enmity that existed between the two people closest to him. He guessed that something had happened between them at the party where he’d first introduced them. The party which had ended so badly. The one thing both of them had in common was a reluctance to talk about whatever had happened, and the last thing Lawrie wanted was to dredge up bad memories of that night.

Johnny was warming up his fingers at the piano in the corner and Lawrie began to assemble his clarinet, massaging grease lightly into the cork. It would need replacing soon, he noticed; it was wearing as thin as his nerves.

‘They asked for upbeat tonight.’ Moses unpacked the sheet music. ‘Nothing slow ’til the end. Get everybody dancing and sweating.’

‘I could use something upbeat meself,’ Al said, eying up the bottle of whisky on the side. ‘Anyone else have a knock on the door this morning?’

Johnny stopped playing. ‘Police, you mean? Last night. I was already out but they scared the hell out of Ursula. Lucky she had the pickney right there when she answered the door so they leave her be. They still was acting sus though. Wanting to know when Joy was born, where she was born, all that. They went all along the street. Ursula know ’cause she stood out on the step and watched ’em.’

Al blew out a lungful of relief. ‘I thought it was just me.’

‘You never told me they come to the house.’ Moses frowned. He and Sonny shared a room in the same house that Ursula and Johnny’s family called home, the landlord making the most out of each inch of space.

‘You was out at work, same as me,’ Johnny shot back.

‘Well, yes, but—’

‘This is ’cause of the baby, right? Clapham Common?’ Lawrie interrupted them.

Al sparked up a rollup as he spoke. ‘They never come right out and say, but they was asking me where I was Wednesday night. Who I was with. And I asked around at work and seems like they only been asking those who are of the Negro persuasion. Not a single white fella knew what I was on about.’

‘The baby was coloured,’ Lawrie told them, his eyes trained on the floor between his feet, his chest growing tight as the men fell silent. Without looking he could feel their eyes, all of them staring at him.

‘They tell you that?’ Johnny finally broke the tension.

‘They wouldn’t answer a single question I asked them,’ Al said, sounding put out. ‘Why they tell you?’

Lawrie reached over and poured himself another measure of whisky. ‘They didn’t tell me; I saw her,’ he said quietly. ‘I was the person who found her in that pond.’

Johnny whistled, its arc descending; Moses’s mouth fell open.

‘They took me to the police station for questioning but they let me go,’ he said, the words tumbling out now. ‘It was a woman walking her dog who saw her first. She come running and I didn’t realise what she’d seen until I was almost in the pond myself.’

‘Just as well there was a witness,’ Al said, laying a hand on Lawrie’s shoulder. ‘Else I reckon they’d have questioned you a damn sight longer. Way that copper spoke to me, I started to wonder if I did it after all, in a moment of madness, and I just forgot.’

‘They think one of us did it though,’ Moses pointed out. ‘You think we know who did it? Could be someone we’re acquainted with.’

It was a sobering thought. The baby had to have at least one black parent and there were only so many black people around, most of them men. Lawrie only knew a few women whose skin was dark enough: Evie; Ursula Sands; another woman whose name he couldn’t remember but had travelled over on the boat with them and now lived at the far end of Somerleyton Road. More were starting to turn up each month, their husbands saving up enough to bring them over, but, barring the birth of Johnny’s youngest, he couldn’t think of anyone else who’d had a baby in England yet. It was as if this child, Ophelia, had been spirited to Clapham Common from somewhere else entirely.

Johnny made a show of checking his watch and stood, signalling that it was time to go even though Lawrie could see from the wall clock that they still had ten minutes. ‘Come on, fellas. For now, we got to trust the police will catch the real culprit. We all are sensible upright citizens after all. None of we got anything to do with this.’

They followed their leader onstage, Lawrie feeling temporarily soothed but he wasn’t sure if it was the effect of the whisky or the new knowledge that he wasn’t alone. If the police were questioning everyone then it meant that they hadn’t singled him out. He’d begun to wonder if Rathbone had only been biding his time, searching for scraps that could be woven into a chain to trap Lawrie. He knew there were people out there who’d be happy to help; at least one person, who he’d not seen or spoken to in months but who had every right to bear a grudge.

He shook off those dark thoughts, closing his mind to them, and it was just the usual adrenaline that kicked in as he reached his spot on the stage, sliding his feet along the solid wood until he found a comfortable stance. The nerves would pass soon enough, but those moments before they started playing, before the music took over, always made him feel like one of the tigers at London Zoo. He’d gone there with Evie the previous autumn. She had leaned against the railing and stared in awe at the big cats, lounging lazily in their compound, but all he could think was how sad they looked, these magnificent beasts now tamed and cowed by their conquerors. If anyone could understand the tigers it was him, trapped in a foreign land and reduced to parading himself before a paying audience. But then he’d raise his clarinet, the reed rough against his lips, and feel like a king.

They warmed up the crowd with a little calypso, Johnny strumming a Lord Kitchener tune on his guitar before segueing into swing for the mainly white audience. The night had barely started but the place was already half full. The men had all slicked their hair back with pomade, the humid air heavy with the scent of Brylcreem. The girls were dolled up in their best dresses, coiffed and coy, every one of them with an eye on the entrance, watching for the next eligible gent. He couldn’t see Evie but she’d be there somewhere, trawling the dancefloor as she’d said to him, trying to find Delia a lad to dance with so that she could abandon her friend for Lawrie later on. Aston would be sticking close to the bar, ready to fritter away his money on the first pretty girl who dared to dance with a coloured man; the sort of modern woman who had their own place, or shared with girls who wouldn’t judge them for bringing home a man who they’d likely never see again.

It surprised Lawrie how many of these women existed in London. Back home such behaviour was unthinkable. An unmarried girl who spent the night with a fella back in Kingston would be ruined. Here it seemed like a badge of honour. What the men could do, the women could do just as well.

For the first time in a long time he found himself thinking of Rose. Maybe it was the opening bars of ‘In the Mood’, a song they hadn’t touched in almost a year, after Sonny protested that he was hearing it in his dreams. It was a guaranteed crowd pleaser and Rose had been humming it that first day as he’d inched his way down that hated spiral staircase into the deep level shelter beneath Clapham Common.

He’d played those notes a thousand times or more, and his fingers moved of their own accord as his mind slipped back into the past. Rose Armstrong. She had looked so respectable, dressed neatly in her WVS uniform, the ring finger on her left hand banded in gold. Lawrie had admired her at first; had even been grateful for her help. He’d thought she was a friend.

That had been his first mistake.

1948

Evie watched them from across the street, concealing herself amongst the steady flow of commuters who rushed in and out of Clapham South tube station. The newcomers emerged, blinking into the bright sunshine, through a secret door that she’d never noticed before, hidden in plain sight. She’d only seen men so far, which was disappointing; she’d hoped for a girl, someone her own age who might need help settling in. Someone who would be grateful to learn how things worked in London, who might become a friend. Ma had told her that they’d have a shock in store, these newcomers who had travelled from so far away, that they would take a while to get used to the city. Maybe that was why Evie’s father had left, unable to settle in and think of London as home. Ma said there was no point talking about him since Evie would never meet him; he didn’t even know that Evie existed.

When she’d been younger, Evie had hoped he would come back to London, that one day there would be a knock on the door and he would be standing there with his suitcase and a brilliant white smile. When Ma punished her, often for something as slight as spilling a drink or grazing her knee in the school playground, banishing her to her bedroom to think on her mistakes, Evie made up stories about him. In her daydreams, her father was an African king and Ma was a wicked witch who had stolen Evie away from his kingdom. He had spent years searching for her and when he found her they would go back to his palace and she would eat all the food she wanted, wear only new dresses and all the people of the land would envy her.

These days she knew better. She would never meet him and that was for the best. Too much time had passed and she’d be embarrassed for him to see them now, her and Ma. He was clever, she knew that much. He’d been over on a mathematics scholarship from Sierra Leone according to Aunt Gertie who sometimes let go of tiny fragments of information after a third gin. No doubt he had made his fortune by now. An impressive man who would be disappointed to find his daughter with aspirations no higher than to become a qualified secretary; her mother a charlady who took in piecework to pay the bills.

A couple of large army tents had been set up on the grass close to the shelter entrance and a Union Jack had been raised to make it clear that this was an official operation. Government sanctioned. They weren’t expecting trouble but Ma had told her to stay away just in case. She thought that Evie had gone to the pictures with Delia, a thrilling lie that had been stammered out over breakfast. Delia had been kept home from college for the last two days with a stomach virus so there was no risk of her running into Ma by accident. Anyway, how could she stay away? She didn’t know anybody who looked like her and now here were a whole group of people whose skin was even darker than hers. An entire ship full of them!

She watched on but still she could see only men. Evie bit her lip, not sure what to do. Men have needs, Ma said. Evie had to be wary of being left alone with a man, even though she wasn’t quite certain what would happen if she was. What would she say to a strange man from another country anyway? She had no idea, but she didn’t want to walk away. Instead, she made a bet with herself. She’d walk up to the next female volunteer who came out. She could pretend that she had some questions about the WVS. She was sixteen now, old enough to join if she wanted.

She crossed her fingers and almost immediately a woman did appear. She wore the usual WVS uniform but this woman made it look glamorous, the lines fitting her body as if it had been tailored. Her hair was immaculately coiffed in neat red waves that sat below her standard issue hat. She led out her charges confidently, six men whose laughter floated out to Evie on the breeze. They all wore jackets despite the fine June day, the temperature having risen to well over seventy. One of them threw a ball into the air, casually, spinning it higher each time it left his hands. The jackets came off and were set down as markers to form a playing area. Evie found herself walking across the road before she knew she’d taken a step, like Karen in The Red Shoes, though her plain brown lace-ups were anything but fit for a princess.

The woman had set herself up with a fold-up chair, carried out from the nearest tent by one of the men. She sat and fanned herself with a slim pamphlet or magazine, her legs crossed. Her shoes were standard brogues but with a small heel and polished to a shine. She flicked her hair back as she watched the men remove their shoes and socks, piling them to one side. She was knowingly beautiful and Evie noticed more than one of the men throwing a glance or a comment her way, trying to attract her attention.

The game got underway and, with the men distracted, Evie moved closer. ‘Excuse me?’ The woman didn’t hear her so she took another tentative pace forward as though playing Grandmother’s Footsteps, wanting the woman to turn but uncertain what to say when she did.

‘Rose?’ A male voice called out from behind her, both Evie and the woman turning. ‘Have you seen my notebook?’

‘You left it lying about. Marge almost threw it away.’ The woman, Rose, reached under her chair and retrieved a battered blue book, a pencil trapped within its pages.

The man looked at Evie and she felt her cheeks redden beneath his stare. He looked only a little older than her but he was different to the boys she’d gone to school with. Years of rationing and light deprivation had left them scrawny and pasty. This man was well-fed, tall, and the sun hit the angles of his cheekbones so that it seemed to her, in that moment, that he was the source of the light.

‘Can we help you?’ Rose walked over.

‘Oh. I just…’ What was wrong with her? She’d been standing across the street for half an hour, thinking of nothing but clever introductions, and now she couldn’t formulate a simple sentence? ‘Sorry, I…’

‘You’re from round here?’ the man interrupted.

‘Yes. I live over in Brixton.’ She pointed in the general direction.

Rose handed him the notebook. ‘Lawrie, stop pestering the poor girl. She only came to see what was going on, didn’t you?’

Evie nodded, feeling foolish. The man called Lawrie smiled at her and for almost six seconds she forgot to breathe. She felt sweat gather in shallow pools under her arms, trapped by the restrictive white blouse that was prescribed as uniform for her secretarial college. She should have made more effort with her hair, not just scraped it back and forced it into a bun. Compared to Rose, she felt like a little girl.

‘Why don’t you come and watch?’ Rose invited. ‘This lot are mad about cricket and it’ll be nice to have a girl to chat to.’

Lawrie fetched another chair for her, setting it beside Rose’s before running off to join his friends. As Evie sat she caught the glint of Rose’s gold wedding band and felt inexplicably relieved. Evie shielded her eyes from the sun with her left hand and watched the cricketers. Lawrie was fielding, the closest man to her, his notebook tucked into his back pocket. She noticed that the smile never left his face. She would know. She couldn’t wrench her eyes from him.

Ten minutes into the match, the batsman hit the ball flying high into the air, Lawrie running backwards, his eyes tracking the arc of the spinning orb, raising his hands as it aimed towards him, answering his call. Cheers and groans erupted and Rose clapped, Evie following her lead. Lawrie looked over with a proud grin, winking at Evie as she smiled back and doubled her applause.

‘Someone’s got an admirer,’ Rose commented. ‘He’s a handsome chap all right, our Lawrie.’

Evie blushed again but she was so captivated by Lawrie that she didn’t think to read anything more into those words. She couldn’t imagine that behind Rose’s polite smile might lie a thin coil of jealousy.

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