Far more likely—the mint broke in two—Dolly had been discovered on the doorstep, and it was duty rather than desire that had brought her into the Smitham fold.
She leaned back further on the carriage seat and closed her eyes; she could see it clearly. The secret pregnancy, the ring-master’s threat, the circus train arriving in Coventry … For a time the young pair struggle bravely on their own, raising the babe on a diet of love and hope; but alas, with no work (there being, after all, only so much call for high- wire skills) and no money for food, desperation sets in. One night as they pass through the centre of town, their baby too weak now to cry, a house catches their eye. A front step, cleaner and shinier than all the others, a light on inside, and the meaty aroma of Janice Smitham’s (admittedly fine) pot roast brisket seeping out beneath the door. They know what they have to do—
‘But I can’t hold on. I can’t!’
Dolly cracked an eye open sufficiently to observe her brother hopping from one leg to the other in the middle of the carriage.
‘Come along, Cuthbert, we’re almost—’
‘But I need the lav now!’
Dolly closed her eyes again, tighter than before. It was true—not the bit about the tragic young couple, she didn’t really believe that— but the part about being special. Dolly had always felt different, as if she were somehow more alive than other people, and the world, fate or destiny, whatever, had big plans for her. She had proof, now, too—scientific proof. Caitlin’s father, who was a doctor and ought to know about such things, had said as much when they played Blotto in Caitlin’s parlour; he’d held up one ink-splotched card after another and Dolly had taken her turn, calling out the first thing that came to mind. ‘Tremendous,’ he’d mumbled around his pipe when they were midway through; and ‘fascinating,’ with a small shake of the head; before, ‘Well, I never …’ and a light laugh that revealed him as rather too handsome for a friend’s father. Only Caitlin’s sour glare had kept Dolly from following him to his study when Dr Rufus declared her answers ‘exceptional’ and suggested—no, urged—further testing.
Exceptional. Dolly ran the word through her mind. Exceptional. She wasn’t one of them, the ordinary Smithams, and she certainly wasn’t going to become one. Her life was going to be bright and wonderful. She was going to dance outside the square of ‘proper’ behaviour within which Mother and Father were so anxious to trap her. Perhaps she’d even run off to the circus herself and try her luck beneath the big top.
The train was slowing now as it drew nearer to Euston station. The houses of London appeared thickly through the window and Dolly felt a tremor of excitement. London! A great whirlpool of a city (or so it said in the introduction to the Ward Lock & Co’s Guide to London she kept hidden in the drawer with her knickers), brimming with theatre and nightlife and truly grand people leading tremendous lives.
When Dolly was younger, her father used to go to London sometimes for work. She’d waited up those nights, watching through the banisters when her mother thought she was asleep, anxious just to get a glimpse of him. His key would sound in the lock, and she’d hold her breath, and then in he’d come. Mother would take his coat, and there’d be an air about him of having Been Somewhere, of being More Important than he had been before. Dolly never would have dreamed of asking him about his trip; even then she’d guessed that the truth would be a poor imitation of her imaginings. Still, she glanced at her father now, hoping he might meet her eyes, that she’d see in them evidence that he, too, felt the pull of the great city they were passing through.
He did not. Arthur Smitham had eyes only for his notebook, the front page now, on which he’d made his careful notation of train times and platform numbers. The corners of his mouth twitched and Dolly’s heart sank. She braced for the panic she knew was coming: that always came no matter how large a buffer they built into their travel time, no matter that they made the same trip every year, no matter that people everywhere caught trains from A to B and B to C and managed not to fuss.