Charles.’
Outside, the night was cold, winter finally gripping the city now that the long, hot summer had died. The streets of Westminster were quiet. I looked back up atthe house and the glass of the windows glinted black back at me. I shivered and turned away, pulling my overcoat tight around me.
9
London. 18 August, 1888
She was crying. She couldn’t help it, even though it was making her nose run, which was making it harder for her to breathe. It’s your own fault : the thought came to her in her sister’s voice, even though Magda had been dead two years. If you dally in wickedness, then the devil will surely come for your soul .
In the corner of the gloomy workshop she could just about see where the four jackets lay discarded and forgotten. He hadn’t wanted them at all; they had been nothing more than a lure – a temptation – and she had succumbed. A choked whimper escaped her throat and immediately she tried to suck the sound back in, aware of her captor busying himself with the unseen contents of an open trunk a few feet away. Her head throbbed where he had struck her suddenly only minutes before, and the rough cloth he had stuffed into her mouth was so rancid she was sure she was about to vomit up the fried fish she had treated herself to that morning, and then no matter what the man was planning she would probably die. Fresh tears ran down her face.
He coughed and spat a ball of phlegm to the floor and she trembled. She had thought him a gentleman, but now she didn’t know what he was. Yes , you do, Ava , the ghost of her sister reprimanded her. He’s the Devil, come to tear your soul from your body. And you have no one to blame but yourself .
She pressed herself into the damp wall as if she could somehow squeeze through the bricks to freedom on the other side. Outside, she had been sweating in the summer heat and wishing for a cool breeze. Now her entire body trembled in the chill, as if he had transported her to an entirely different world. And perhaps he had.
Not so far away, her employer – her ex -employer – would be working hard on her sewing machine, not giving her a single thought – and why should she? She wouldn’t miss Ava or the jackets until eight that evening, when she was due to return them with the buttonholes and finishing done. Of course it had never been in her plan to return them, not once she’d met a fine gentleman who’d persuaded her to sell them to him.
More tears squeezed from her eyes as she heard the clank of metal on metal: he was removing items from the trunk and laying them out on the small workbench, muttering quietly to himself as he did so. How had someone so clearly caught by madness appeared so sane? Or had she simply been blinded to it by her own greed, by the thought of having some money in her pocket and being able to move on fromher tiny, grubby room and start again somewhere else in the heaving city? He held up something that glinted in the gloom. What was that? A knife? Too big; a saw? She mewled again and fought not to release the contents of her bladder.
Food had always been her downfall. She was tall, had been even as a child, and her mother always said she had been born with a man’s appetite to go with her height. She had become slimmer in these recent hard times, but even given her life of near-poverty since Magda died she still had a fair coating of flesh on her bones. Maybe that was why Katherine Jackson didn’t feed her during her working hours, like many other employers did – perhaps she thought Ava was managing perfectly well on the miserable four shillings a week she paid her. It was only a brief moment of anger, and then she cried some more, knowing this was not the truth. Katherine Jackson couldn’t afford to feed her and that was all there was to it. She too was struggling to earn some kind of living, but that hadn’t stopped Ava stealing the four jackets, which would cost Katherine dearly. She hadn’t even been afraid as
Outside, the night was cold, winter finally gripping the city now that the long, hot summer had died. The streets of Westminster were quiet. I looked back up atthe house and the glass of the windows glinted black back at me. I shivered and turned away, pulling my overcoat tight around me.
9
London. 18 August, 1888
She was crying. She couldn’t help it, even though it was making her nose run, which was making it harder for her to breathe. It’s your own fault : the thought came to her in her sister’s voice, even though Magda had been dead two years. If you dally in wickedness, then the devil will surely come for your soul .
In the corner of the gloomy workshop she could just about see where the four jackets lay discarded and forgotten. He hadn’t wanted them at all; they had been nothing more than a lure – a temptation – and she had succumbed. A choked whimper escaped her throat and immediately she tried to suck the sound back in, aware of her captor busying himself with the unseen contents of an open trunk a few feet away. Her head throbbed where he had struck her suddenly only minutes before, and the rough cloth he had stuffed into her mouth was so rancid she was sure she was about to vomit up the fried fish she had treated herself to that morning, and then no matter what the man was planning she would probably die. Fresh tears ran down her face.
He coughed and spat a ball of phlegm to the floor and she trembled. She had thought him a gentleman, but now she didn’t know what he was. Yes , you do, Ava , the ghost of her sister reprimanded her. He’s the Devil, come to tear your soul from your body. And you have no one to blame but yourself .
She pressed herself into the damp wall as if she could somehow squeeze through the bricks to freedom on the other side. Outside, she had been sweating in the summer heat and wishing for a cool breeze. Now her entire body trembled in the chill, as if he had transported her to an entirely different world. And perhaps he had.
Not so far away, her employer – her ex -employer – would be working hard on her sewing machine, not giving her a single thought – and why should she? She wouldn’t miss Ava or the jackets until eight that evening, when she was due to return them with the buttonholes and finishing done. Of course it had never been in her plan to return them, not once she’d met a fine gentleman who’d persuaded her to sell them to him.
More tears squeezed from her eyes as she heard the clank of metal on metal: he was removing items from the trunk and laying them out on the small workbench, muttering quietly to himself as he did so. How had someone so clearly caught by madness appeared so sane? Or had she simply been blinded to it by her own greed, by the thought of having some money in her pocket and being able to move on fromher tiny, grubby room and start again somewhere else in the heaving city? He held up something that glinted in the gloom. What was that? A knife? Too big; a saw? She mewled again and fought not to release the contents of her bladder.
Food had always been her downfall. She was tall, had been even as a child, and her mother always said she had been born with a man’s appetite to go with her height. She had become slimmer in these recent hard times, but even given her life of near-poverty since Magda died she still had a fair coating of flesh on her bones. Maybe that was why Katherine Jackson didn’t feed her during her working hours, like many other employers did – perhaps she thought Ava was managing perfectly well on the miserable four shillings a week she paid her. It was only a brief moment of anger, and then she cried some more, knowing this was not the truth. Katherine Jackson couldn’t afford to feed her and that was all there was to it. She too was struggling to earn some kind of living, but that hadn’t stopped Ava stealing the four jackets, which would cost Katherine dearly. She hadn’t even been afraid as
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