We've Come to Take You Home by Susan Gandar Page B

first day in London, following the Major home from the station, she hadn’t understood what had driven the women to rioting. But now she did. She was young and fit, and could stand there for hours, but for the elderly or sick it was impossible. Desperate people throw stones.
    â€˜Did you get everything?’
    â€˜Yes, ma’am.’
    That she came home with anything was a miracle.
    â€˜The jam and the eggs…’
    Her mother had made her own jam from the strawberries and the raspberries she grew in their garden. And her father would often come home carrying some newly laid eggs, still warm with white and brown fluffy feathers stuck to them, as part-payment for the work he had done that day. But here in the city everything had to be paid for with pennies and shillings. The cost of the spoonful of jam and the two eggs she’d managed to buy that morning would have kept her own family fed for a month.
    â€˜Yes, ma’am.’
    The Major’s wife clapped her hands.
    â€˜The beef?’
    Whether it was beef, or cat, or dog, or even rat, the Major’s wife had some meat for her suet pudding.
    â€˜Yes, ma’am.’
    â€˜And the bread, you did get the bread?’
    What should she say? Should she tell the truth, that she’d bought the bread but had given it away to a starving boy who would be lucky if he lived another day?
    â€˜I’m sorry, ma’am.’
    â€˜What? There must have been a loaf of bread somewhere…’
    â€˜I’m sorry, ma’am. The shops had run out.’
    â€˜All the shops?’
    If there had been one more person standing ahead of her in the queue, her lie would be the truth.
    â€˜Yes, ma’am.’
    â€˜We’ll have to get you out of the house a little earlier tomorrow morning…’
    Eyes down, mouth closed, Jess followed the Major’s wife along the hallway.
    â€˜Tom is out with his father. They won’t be back until five o’clock, possibly six o’clock, which will give us time to get ready. The glass and china will have to be washed and the silver will need polishing. The Major wants flowers, candles, everything just like it used to be…’
    Her last day at Eaton Villa was going to be a long, hard one. After the son told his parents about their maid, a thief and insolent with it, she would get her dismissal. She would go back home to the country and try to find a job, one that didn’t need a reference, perhaps in a factory or on a farm, closer to her mother.
    â€˜Jess, I forgot, this came in the post for you.’
    She tucked the envelope up her sleeve. It must be from her mother. The paper, the envelope and the stamps would have been expensive. And she would have had to find someone to write it for her. She must have something very special to say.

TWENTY-TWO
    S AM TIPPED HERSELF OFF the chair. The floor lurched over to one side. Walls that had been solid tilted and swayed. She grabbed hold of the table and closed her eyes. The darkness whirled and swirled. She opened her eyes and raised her head. The window seemed much further away but also much larger, soaring over the kitchen and everything in it, including herself.
    She fixed her eyes on the curtains. The spots and stripes, which before had been so regimented and orderly, now shimmered and shook, spiralling and cart-wheeling, backwards and forwards, out of control. Finger by finger, she detached herself from the table. She slid her foot out across the floor. It held. One step, two steps, a third step and she was safely across.
    She leant over the kitchen sink, fighting the waves of sickness bubbling up inside her. The feeling of well-being she had experienced earlier had been replaced by a cold, dark, bleak emptiness. She was drunk. And not just drunk but very drunk. And she had to get upstairs to her bedroom without her mother either seeing or hearing her.
    She turned off the light and, with her hand clamped onto the doorframe, took one