the segment, a third of the way in, where she’d so lovingly collected and glued the Society photographs of Vivien Jenkins. They were pictures she’d once pored over, memorising and aspiring to every detail. She couldn’t believe how stupid she’d been, how badly misled.
With all the might she could find, Dolly tore those pages from the book. Ripping like a wild cat, she turned that woman’s image into the smallest shreds possible; every drop of rage was funnelled into the task. That stiff secretive way Vivien Jenkins regarded the camera—rip—nev- er smiling as broadly as she might—rip—see how she felt being treated like a piece of rubbish—rip.
Dolly was poised to shred further—she’d have gladly gone on all night—when something caught her eye. She froze, peering closer at the scrap in her hands, breathing heavily—yes, there it was.
In one of the photographs, the locket had slipped from beneath Vivien’s blouse and was clearly visible, sitting crookedly atop her silk ruffle. Dolly touched the spot with her fingertip and gasped as she felt the scald of the day she’d returned the locket.
Dropping the photograph fragment on the ground beside her, Dolly leaned her head back against the mattress and closed her eyes.
Her head was spinning. Her knee ached. She was spent.
Eyes still closed, she dug out her packet of cigarettes and lit one, smoking quietly.
It was still so fresh. Dolly saw the whole thing in her mind—the unexpectedness of being admitted by Henry Jenkins, the questions he’d asked her, his obvious suspicions about his wife’s whereabouts.
What might have happened, she wondered, if they’d been given a little longer together? It had been on the tip of her tongue to correct him that day, to explain about the shifts at the canteen. What if she had? What if she’d been allowed the chance to say, ‘Why no, Mr Jenkins, I’m afraid that’s not possible. I’m not sure what she tells you, but Vivien doesn’t report for duty at the canteen more than, oh, once a week.’
But Dolly hadn’t said it, had she, none of it. She’d wasted the one opportunity she’d had to let Henry Jenkins know he wasn’t imagining things; that his wife was indeed rather more engaged in other affairs than he’d have liked. She’d thrown away her only chance to put Vivien Jenkins right in the middle of a splendid mess of her own making. For she couldn’t very well tell him now, could she? Henry Jenkins wasn’t likely to give Dolly the time of day, not now that—thanks to Vivien— he thought her a thieving servant, not now that her circumstances were so reduced, and certainly not without any proof.
It was hopeless—Dolly let out a long deflating stream of smoke. Unless she happened to glimpse Vivien in a clinch with a man who wasn’t her husband, unless she then happened to procure a photograph of the pair of them together, an image that confirmed all of Henry’s fears, it was useless. And Dolly didn’t have time to hide in dark alleyways, talk her way into strange hospitals, and somehow be watching at the very right moment in the very right place. Perhaps if she knew where and when Vivien would be with her doctor, but what were the chances of— Dolly gasped and sat bolt upright. It was so simple she could have laughed. She did laugh. All this time she’d been stewing over how unfair it all was, wishing there were some way to put things right, and the perfect opportunity had been staring her in the face. Vivien Jenkins would get just what she deserved and, if everything played out, Dolly might just get a fresh start with Jimmy too.
Nineteen
Greenacres, 2011
‘SHE SAYS she wants to come home.’
Laurel rubbed her eyes with one hand and felt about on the bedside table with the other. Finally she found her glasses. ‘She wants what?’ Rose’s voice came down the line again, slower this time and overly patient, as if she were speaking to someone for whom English was a second language. ‘She told me this morning. She wants to come home. To Greenacres.’ Another pause. ‘Instead of the hospital.’
‘Ah.’ Laurel looped her frames on beneath the phone and squinted out of the bedroom window. Lord, but it was bright. ‘She wants to come home. And what about the doctor. What did he say?’
‘I’m going to speak with him when he’s finished his rounds, but— oh, Lol,’ her voice hushed, ‘the nurse told me she thought it was time.’ Alone in