The Toymakers(5)

~

Help Wanted

Are you lost? Are you afraid? Are you a child at heart?

So are we.

The Emporium opens with the first frost of winter.

Sales and stocktaking, no experience required. Bed and board

included.

Apply in person at London’s premier merchant of toys and

childhood paraphernalia

Papa Jack’s Emporium

Iron Duke Mews, London W1K

~



There was a different quality to the letters, something that made them appear to float an infinitesimally small level above the page. How her eyes had glanced over it before, she did not know.

Cathy ran her hand across her belly, pretending she could sense the tiny kicks that would one day come. Though she felt nothing, she could still imagine it – the he, the she, the unformed promise of days and years to come – tumbling in unrestrained delight within her. How could something so beautiful be the worst thing in all of the world?

Something drew her eyes back to the advert, refusing to let them go. Because an idea was blossoming inside her. An advert like that had to be circled for a reason. Certainly it had not been for her father. A message, then, from Lizzy to her sister, compelling her to run?

Yes, she thought, run.

She was still staring at the newspaper as the soft autumn darkness descended. In the house around her, time was slowing down. She heard the familiar rattle of doors being bolted and the fire being stifled in the grate. Once upon a time, there would have come a tapping at the door and her mother would have peeped in to whisper her goodnights. Tonight, there was only the long silence. The lamp on the landing fizzled into blackness, and Cathy was left, still staring at the advert by the silvery light of the stars.

Sales and stocktaking – that sounded simple enough. No experience required – that seemed an invitation too good to be true. And, if she wondered why there was an advert for a store in London so far outside the city itself, her bewilderment did not last long. London, she thought. Yes, she could disappear in a place like that. People went missing in London all of the time.





THE GIRL IN THE TOYSHOP



LEIGH-ON-SEA TO LONDON, NOVEMBER 1906


Running away was not like it was in the stories. People did not try and stop you. They did not give chase. The thing people didn’t understand was that you had to decide what you were running away from. Most of the time it wasn’t mothers or fathers or monsters or villains; most of the time you were running away from that little voice inside your head, the one telling you to stay where you are, that everything will turn out all right.

That voice kept Cathy up almost all of the night. In the darkest hour she sat in the window, one hand cupped around her belly, the other holding the advert up to the starlight that cascaded through. ‘And what do you think we should do?’ she whispered. ‘It isn’t just me, little thing. It would be you running too.’

The answer came in a rush of feeling, of love and nausea and imaginary kicks.

Her mind made up, she was awake before dawn. She could hear the house coming to life, the fire being stoked in the grate. She watched from the window as her father set out into the dark. She watched, some time later, as Lizzy disappeared for school: just another ordinary day. Later still, her mother brought her toast, depositing it without a word. Even then there was that little voice in the back of her mind. Stay where you are, it was telling her. Everything will be all right.

But everything wouldn’t be all right. She knew it, with the same sinking inevitability that she knew she would not keep the toast down this morning. Even her stomach was mutinying against her.

There was so little to take with her: three clean dresses meant for school, socks from the drawer, the copy of Gulliver Lizzy had meant for her to have. The few pennies she had saved were meant for Christmas gifts, but she pocketed them all the same.

Goodbyes would be in short order today. She did not want to make one to her room – it would only lead to tears, and tears would only keep her here – so without looking back she went out on to the landing and hovered at the top of the stair. Down there, her mother was lost in a clattering of buckets and mops, pots and pans.

Cathy paused once at the bottom of the stairs. But it was not a second thought holding her here. It was only the realisation that this place where she had been raised, where she had squabbled and sobbed and sought comfort in her mother’s arms, wasn’t hers. It was already changed – so, without a moment of regret, she stepped out into the bracing November air.

After that, all she had to do was walk.

The station sat on the seafront, only a short walk along the estuary sands. If anyone looked at her on the way, they saw only simple, smiling Cathy Wray. They did not see the baby she brought with her. If they noticed the way she kept glancing over her shoulder, fearful of being followed by some fisherman friend of her father’s, they did not try to stop her. And when she finally stood on the platform, ticket in hand, she understood why: the world cared nothing for a single runaway daughter. It had seen the story so many times.

Alone, she boarded the train and watched the seafront sailing past. Cathy had ridden the train before, but never with this same sense of freedom. Was there a word for having done something wrong and yet so terribly right at the same time? If not, she would have to make one, a word for only her and her child. She pressed her face up against the window as the towns and rags of country flickered by. London was stealing up on her by degrees, the railway sidings and towns becoming a city only in those moments when she looked the other way. One moment she was passing through the shadows of Upminster, the next the platforms at Stepney East. By the time she stepped off the train, all the other passengers fanning out into the streets, she had quite forgotten the exhilaration of escape. It was a revelation to know that, after all the pious staring of the last six weeks, she was a nobody again.