Miranda
THERE WAS ALWAYS A BUZZ IN THE PALACE DINING HALL ON a Friday afternoon. Not only was it the end of another hard week, but the pay went out on Friday, the weekend heralding a splurge of fun.
‘Where’s Lucy?’ Caroline sighed as she looked around the great hall. ‘I hope she hasn’t taken against us so much that she’s sitting at a different table.’
Betty shook her head. ‘She said she felt unwell and went home this morning after she got her pay. I told her to see a doctor, but she said it was nothing.’
‘I hope she’s not skiving off work, spending her wages on fancy dresses.’ Hilda frowned. ‘The palace doesn’t take well to malingerers.’
But Betty shook her head. ‘I popped home at lunchtime, and she was in bed, wrapped up warm. She promised me she was fine, just a bit of tummy trouble.’ Betty paused, frowning. ‘Only, as I came down the stairs, I noticed blood on her coat. I hope she didn’t have a fall or anything.’
Something about this little tale sat oddly with Miranda, and she found herself going over it.
‘She came to work this morning, stayed long enough to collect her pay, and then left, only to go back to bed?’ Miranda thought of the large sum that Lucy had borrowed from her just yesterday – why would she be so desperate for more that she’d come into work when she was sick?
‘She seemed fine on the way to the palace this morning,’ Caroline said. ‘Quiet, maybe, apprehensive about something, but not unwell.’
And then there was the blood.
Which is when Miranda recalled the woman at the launderette, asking if she knew the blonde girl, to keep an eye on her in case she was ‘in trouble’, the words emphasized with a sharp raise of the eyebrows.
Miranda hadn’t thought about it at the time – the woman was always speaking in a secret Cockney code.
But now, Miranda knew exactly what she could have meant.
Abruptly, she got to her feet, turning to Caroline. ‘I think I might go and check up on her. Would you like to come, too?’
To Caroline, this was a curious question. ‘There’s still another hour until the end of the workday.’ But then she saw the urgency in Miranda’s eyes. ‘I suppose I could, with the queen still in Balmoral.’
Hastily, they made their way outside, Betty fast behind them – how like her to know it was an emergency.
By the time they were at the tube station, Miranda had shared her fears.
‘There she is, bleeding and in bed, just after receiving her pay and having borrowed more from me just yesterday – it all adds up. The other week, she left some very revealing lingerie in the launderette, and then the woman told me about Lucy being “in trouble”.’
Horrified, Betty cried, ‘Why didn’t you say something?’ and they raced down to the platform.
Thankfully, a train came quickly, and soon they were rushing through the Camden streets wondering what they would find.
From the outside, the house appeared empty, the curtains to Lucy’s bedroom drawn. Yet as they entered the hallway, the place felt stuffy with a vague smell of bodily fluids. But most alarmingly, there was a sound emanating from Lucy’s bedroom, the whimpering of a creature in pain.
Without looking at the others, Miranda took to the stairs two at a time, racing up to the top landing. As soon as she pushed the door open, the yelping stopped. The figure on the bed, a curled shape shuddering in the dark, didn’t even turn to see who it was.
‘Get out!’ Lucy cried, her voice thick with tears.
Caroline had come up behind Miranda, propelling both of them into the room as Miranda raced up to Lucy, putting a hand on her forehead. ‘Are you all right?’ She knelt down beside the bed, Caroline beside her, pulling Lucy into her arms. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing,’ Lucy whimpered, trying to pull away, suddenly gripping her stomach and groaning in agony.
‘Listen, Lucy,’ Miranda said. ‘We’re here to help you. It’s important that you tell us the truth. Did you have an abortion?’
‘N-no,’ the girl tried to say, but she convulsed with tears, hiding her face in her hands.
Caroline gently shushed her. ‘It’s all right. We won’t tell anyone.’
The smell was strong in the small, hot room, and Miranda saw the blankets stained with a thick, dark mess of blood.
Caroline’s eyes met Miranda’s, an urgency in them as she looked from the blood to the state of Lucy, her tangled hair pressed to her face with sweat and blood. ‘She needs to go to hospital.’
‘I can’t,’ Lucy cried. ‘It’s illegal.’ Her voice wavered, as if delirious. ‘I’d rather be dead than go to prison – it would only give my mother one more reason to hate me.’ She began to sob. ‘Leave me to die on my own.’
But then Betty barged into the room, pushing the others aside.
‘Let’s take her now, before it’s too late,’ she said, ignoring Lucy’s pleas.
‘It’s our duty to look after her. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if anything happened.
’ She sat down beside Lucy. ‘We’re your family now, dear, and whether you like it or not, we’re not about to leave you here. ’
Amid Lucy’s fruitless protests, the women got her to her feet, put a coat around her, and helped her down the stairs. Betty knew a neighbour who had a car, and the women helped Lucy into the back and got in beside her.
‘If anyone’s going to arrest you, dear,’ Betty said, ‘they’ll have to speak to me about it first.’
Even though the hospital was busy, a nurse took one look at Lucy and told them to take her to a side ward.
‘Tell me what happened to her,’ she asked, helping her onto the bed, drawing a curtain around her so that she could deal with the blood.
Miranda looked at the others.
Would the hospital report Lucy to the police?
‘She’s having a miscarriage,’ Betty said. ‘And she’s been bleeding a lot, so we thought she should come in.’
The nurse lowered her voice. ‘Was it an abortion?’
The women looked at each other, and Miranda decided to play it safe. ‘We don’t know.’
But the nurse took a deep, exasperated breath and said, ‘We keep a whole ward empty every Friday night for abortions. Friday’s payday, you see.’ She shook her head, making a note on her clipboard.
‘Will she be all right?’ Caroline asked.
‘We won’t know until we’ve had a look. At least you brought her here. The worst ones are those who bleed out at home.’ She gave them a firm-lipped smile. ‘Your sister is lucky you found her when you did.’
‘Sister?’ Caroline said.
And she was just about to explain when Betty said, ‘We’re all the family she has.’
The nurse showed them to the waiting room, and it was decided that Miranda and Betty would stay the night, Caroline having to get back for Annabel.
‘You were right to be concerned about Richard,’ Miranda said. ‘I didn’t realize she was so vulnerable.’
‘We should have done more to stop her.’ Betty looked tired. ‘With the coronation and everything else that’s been going on, I took my eyes off her.’
‘You can’t blame yourself, Betty. It’s expected for women to feel like they are responsible for making sure that everyone is doing well. But in this case, Richard should take the blame. At least we found her in time and got her to the hospital.’
Betty squeezed her hand. ‘Thank you. It means a lot having you here. It’s like my sister has been looking down, sending you to me.
There’ll be plenty more jobs at the palace after the coronation.
I hope you’ll stay.’ She looked into Miranda’s eyes.
‘I know you accused me of using you to replace my Harry, but perhaps it’s time we both accept how much we need other people – how we could become each other’s missing pieces. ’
And Miranda couldn’t help but put an arm around her aunt’s shoulder. ‘We can be our very own family.’
LATER THAT NIGHT, AFTER Lucy had stabilized, Miranda found an excuse to creep out of the hospital for a few minutes. It was her night to telephone O’Hara, and he’d be livid if she missed the call. But as she spotted a telephone box, she felt a dread that had been growing over the last months.
How was she going to protect her friends if they were blamed for stories being leaked to the press?
And what would happen if they ever found out that Miranda was J. Marshall? That the secrets were now spread across every newspaper were in fact their secrets.
‘Hopefully it won’t come to that,’ she muttered as she picked up the receiver.
As usual, O’Hara got to the point. ‘What have you got?’
‘I have more on the queen’s jewels, how she’s become the wealthiest woman in Britain. But inside, she doesn’t want the glamour or wealth. She wants to be a simple countrywoman, looking after her children and raising horses.’
‘Horses?’
‘She breeds racehorses with a childhood friend, Porchey – his real name is Lord Porchester. Rumour has it he’s in love with her, always has been.’ She thought of Caroline, telling her in confidence. Only the very closest to the queen knew this small detail.
‘That’s more like it,’ he said. ‘Are they having an affair?’
‘I don’t think so, but they speak on the phone a great deal,’ she said, then added, ‘about horses.’
O’Hara grunted. ‘We need an affair, Miranda. She can’t be all that squeaky clean, can she? Or is she just a schoolgirl, too scared to get her hands dirty.’
Repulsed, Miranda drew back. ‘She’s not a child. She’s a young woman who’s been taught constitution and law, as well as global politics. It might take a while for her to find her footing, but from what I gather, that’s her way. She’s the type of person to get it right.’
‘Well, you’ve changed your tune.’ He scoffed. ‘Wasn’t it you who said that the whole notion of sitting a young woman on a throne and calling her queen was ludicrous?’
Had she said that? She blanched as she recollected her words. How flippant she’d been, how ignorant.
‘Now that I’ve been here a while, I can see how much the monarch holds the country together.
Every store, café and hairdresser has a photograph of the queen on the wall.
Everyone tells me how much they adore her, how grateful they are to her father for leading the country through the war.
The queen isn’t a joke – she’s a person dedicating her life to this role. ’
‘Honestly, Miranda, you’re starting to sound like them. You need to remember to stay objective, be a discerning journalist.’ His voice was laced with sarcasm, and Miranda felt her heckles rising as she muttered a goodbye and put down the receiver.
As she walked back to the hospital, she wasn’t thinking of O’Hara but of her own dismissive scorn for the royals when she’d arrived. How she’d let the Gazette hacks make her belittle others. They preyed on regular people. It was how they made themselves feel above everyone else.
But that wasn’t Miranda. She was in journalism to make a difference, not to exploit people or try to expose their beliefs as some kind of farce.
And she was left wondering if she was doing the right thing.
Was she furthering herself? Was she helping her friends, the new queen, the regular women out there desperate for the female monarch to succeed? Or was it only bettering this bully and his cheap newspapermen that revelled in making themselves look clever at everyone else’s expense?