The Promise by Lesley Pearse

‘It was just a couple of weeks before I told him I thought I was having his baby. He’d been telling me for some little time that he knew of some land just out of London that was ripe for building on. He even showed me some sketches of small houses, just perfect for young married couples who wanted an inexpensive house in the countryside but could travel into the city for their work.’
    Belle could see what was coming. ‘I suppose he told you his funds were tied up and he needed cash to secure the land?’
    ‘How did you know that?’ Miranda said in surprise.
    ‘Instinct,’ Belle said. ‘And you volunteered your savings?’
    ‘He wanted a hundred, but I didn’t have that much,’ she said. ‘He promised he would give it back just as soon as he’d sold some shares.’
    Belle felt a tight ball of anger in her stomach at anyone being so low. ‘I hate to say this to you, Miranda, but I think you must face the fact that getting money out of you was his intention from the moment he discovered where you lived,’ she said. ‘His good clothes, his manner and even where you met him, indicate that he was actively looking for someone to cheat. He’s clearly a man who lives on his wits.’
    ‘Then you don’t think he was married either?’
    She asked that question with such hope in her eyes that Belle almost laughed at her stupidity. The loss of her money, not turning up to meet her when he said he would, wasn’t evidence to her of a scoundrel; she still chose to believe he’d let her down because he was married.
    ‘He might be, to someone as gullible as you,’ Belle replied. ‘But it’s more likely he’s got a whole string of women around London, all doting on him, keeping him and believing they are his true love.’
    Belle had heard Jimmy and Garth talking many times about such men they knew back in Seven Dials who made a living out of cheating women. Mog had always said that until women woke up, got the vote and insisted on a society which wasn’t run just by men, for men, there would always be a hiding place for cads and bounders.
    ‘How did you find out about the woman who “helped” you?’ Belle asked. She couldn’t imagine how any woman with a family background like Miranda’s had made contact with such a person.
    ‘From a woman in the house in Greenwich,’ Miranda said. ‘I started to cry when the man who ran that place was sharp with me and said he didn’t know Frank. She came after me and asked if she could help. I was so upset, and she was so kind, I told her about the baby, and she gave me the address in Bermondsey.’
    Belle nodded. She guessed the woman in question was a whore, and one with a heart too. Sometimes she thought that the only women with big hearts were fallen women.
    ‘It was an awful place she sent me to,’ Miranda confided. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. There were ragged, dirty children everywhere, broken doors and windows, it was so dirty and smelly I wanted to turn and run away. But I couldn’t, I had to go through with it.’
    Belle could imagine what the place was like, a rotting, overcrowded tenement like the ones around Seven Dials. ‘You were very brave. But if you could go through that, you can go through anything. Now, how are you feeling?’
    ‘I think I’m losing some blood now.’ She blushed scarlet at having to reveal something so personal.
    ‘Lie back and let me look,’ Belle said. ‘Don’t be embarrassed. You haven’t got anything I haven’t, and just think of me as a nurse.’
    Miranda was bleeding a little, but it was mostly the soapy water the woman had used running out of her. Belle had been told by one of the girls in New Orleans who had gone through it herself that the practice was to open the sealed end of the cervix, then pump soapy water in, which acted as an irritant and made the woman miscarry. It didn’t bear dwelling on what they made the opening to the cervix with.
    Belle washed Miranda and fixed a piece of clean rag