Page 10

I frowned. ‘And do what?’

‘Keep your eyes and ears open,’ she said, fixing me with a dark look. ‘We’re with the enemy now.’

That was Miss Decima for you – she always found a way to make enemies. But I felt a thrill even so. It’d been weeks – months, really – since Miss Decima had asked me to do any detective work. This was my chance to impress her. ‘As you wish, Miss Decima. I won’t let you down.’

I left the box just as the auditorium erupted into applause behind me. The corridors were rapidly emptying as I slipped along, drawing no attention to myself. I was buzzing with excitement: finally, I was back to what I’d been doing last year – moving in the shadows, hunting for clues. I got the feeling it would all be a waste of time, but at least I wasn’t home folding bedsheets. I followed the last of the crowds up the stairs, heading for the public gallery.

It was packed, too, when I reached the top: shoulder to shoulder, everyone craning their necks to see the speaker onstage. I was pressed to the back, so I couldn’t see a thing, but I could tell just by the enraptured faces and hushed whispers around me that it was Mrs Pankhurst herself.

‘As we begin this meeting,’ she was saying, ‘the end of the procession is leaving Embankment. When it began, it reached from Westminster Bridge to the Mansion House …’

That got a big cheer. I tried to catch a glimpse, but it was no use – I was too far back. It was hotter than ever up here, stuffy as hell. I could tell I wasn’t going to overhear anything useful – everyone was too busy listening to the speech. I turned around to leave, but the staircase behind me had already filled up. There was no way back down.

‘What does this demonstration of ours mean?’ Mrs Pankhurst continued. ‘It means victory! We who began as a small, insignificant band of women only a few years ago, are now a mighty army, an irresistible force …’

I yanked at my collar. The heat was insufferable. I spied a door in the nearby wall saying SMOKING GALLERY and fumbled my way through the crowd towards it. ‘Sorry. Beg pardon, ’scuse me.’

‘We have proved that we can combine!’ Mrs Pankhurst carried on. ‘We have proved that we can put aside all personal beliefs and personal objects for a common end!’

I reached the door and stumbled through it.

‘We have proved that women have the greatest powers of organization …’

I stepped outside and found myself standing on top of the world.

The smoking gallery was the balcony and balustrade that ran right around the outside of the Hall’s dome. I’d seen it enough times from the ground, but I’d never been up here for myself. It was completely empty and high enough to catch an evening breeze: after a good hour packed in with crowds, that was a relief, let me tell you. I leant over the railing and gazed at the ground below. I was at the back of the Hall, facing away from the main road: I could see the quad and the stone staircase which led down to the nearby university, and all the other parts of the Gore that surrounded the Hall. I probably could have made out my own front door, if it wasn’t for the wall blocking off the walkway right beside me. I’ve no idea why they did that – probably to stop people running rings around it. Far below, a dozen women with placards were arguing with police officers who were trying to move them back to the main road.

I shook my head. ‘All this for a vote,’ I muttered.

I didn’t understand any of it. I couldn’t vote either – you had to be over twenty-one, for a start, but you had to own property, too, and that was never going to happen for me. I would probably be Miss Decima’s servant for the rest of her life, and after that I’d probably be someone else’s servant. That was my lot: it might not have been perfect, but I had accepted it. What good would it have done me to go around smashing windows and punching policemen because of it?

Nan would have had a word or two to say about women who behaved like that, let me tell you. She wasn’t a mouse either – she was a tough woman. She gave up everything to look after me, until she got so ill she couldn’t even look after herself, but, no matter what she suffered, she never once complained. She was proud of her place; she didn’t go around causing trouble and demanding more. Hard work, good manners: that’s how you get what you want in life. Take me asking for that advance on my wages: was I going to ask Miss Decima politely, with fitting deference and respect? Or was I going to smack the teacup out of her hand and say, give me what’s mine, you old so-and-so, or I’ll let you have something to chew on?

Of course I wouldn’t. For a start, she’d kill me.

I shifted on my feet. I had to admit that it was odd, Miss Decima hating the suffragettes so much. They seemed like a perfect fit: she loved throwing bricks. But if I’d learnt anything from being her servant for a year, it was that the moment you thought you had Miss Decima pinned, that was when she always surprised you most.

There was a loud bang and I jumped, just as a cascade of colours showered down over the Hall. Someone was setting off fireworks on the main road; sure enough, the women below raced round to see them for themselves, quickly followed by the policemen. Within a few seconds it was just me on my own, gazing at an empty quad.

It was strange, looking down at the roads I walked every single day. It suddenly made everything that bit clearer. It wasn’t just that I felt out of place in Kensington, covering up my accent and shabby clothes. It wasn’t just that I was frustrated with my employment, overlooked in favour of the Ivys. I was lonely. I had no one to talk to, except for Miss Decima. I couldn’t think of the last time I’d whiled away a few hours with a friend. The only friend I’d managed to make in the last few years was Temperance, and she’d tried to kill me. Twice.

There was another explosion of applause from the auditorium; another burst of fireworks from the main road. I sighed. I wasn’t going to find any clues standing out here on my own, feeling sorry for myself. It was time to head back inside.

I probably would have done just that, if it hadn’t been for Miss Decima. Without all those hours of training, working on my eyes and ears, taking care to observe every detail around me, I might have turned around and failed to notice what was happening below me, and the whole mess would have turned out completely differently.

Instead, at the last second, I saw something.

Three women on the quad below. It was the way they were moving that first caught my eye: furtively, purposefully. I couldn’t see their faces, on account of their hats, and they were moving too fast. One of them was older than the others; she moved a touch more slowly, I thought. Even from up here, I could see that they were all wearing suffragette ribbons on their white dresses.

They went to the statue in the centre of the quad, directly below where I was standing. They glanced around, checking to make sure no one was watching. Nobody was, of course – they were all on the main road, gazing up at the fireworks. The only person watching them was me, and they had no idea that I was up here.

I saw the women speak a few hurried words to each other: something was agreed. One of the younger two was carrying a big carpet bag with handles. She dropped it on the ground and started rummaging inside. The other young one walked to the base of the statue, hoisted her skirts and then suddenly stopped to give a hacking cough. I’d remember that cough for a long time: it sounded terrible, it did, coming from deep in her chest. Worse even than Nan’s had been on her bad days. I watched as she took a moment to steady herself on the statue, hoisted up her skirts again and started climbing.

What is she doing? I remember thinking, just as the shout came.

They whipped around: a police officer was racing across the quad towards them, waving a truncheon. The women didn’t wait another second – the one on the statue jumped down, the young one on the ground grabbed the carpet bag, and all three bolted. They raced down the road that led to our front door – our road, I realized – with the police officer close behind, until I couldn’t see them any more because that sodding – pardon me, blessed wall – was in the way.

I stood frozen for a moment. I was thinking about that truncheon; about what Miss Decima would have told me to do had she been standing beside me.