Essie wanted her sister to stand tall. Perhaps she could even become a teacher, like Miss Barnes.
Essie studied her own scarred palms and knew that Gertie deserved better than a life lived on the factory floor. And Essie was determined she would have it.
Essie took the letter from Miss Barnes’s hand. ‘Thank you. You are so kind. Our mother, she can be diffi—’
‘I understand … Honestly, Essie. If I could take everyone in this class with me I would. But trust me when I say Gertrude is special. She has a magnificent mind. Deft and curious. Do you know, every day I leave here and I go to a meeting—’
‘The suffragettes?’ whispered Essie, as if she might be arrested for the mere mention of the word.
‘Yes. And do you know why I go to those meetings?’
‘For women to have the vote?’
‘Partly. But I go to different meetings in the East End, with Sylvia Pankhurst. Miss Pankhurst is arranging for children to be cared for while women work or study. Soup kitchens. Clean clothes. Forget about what you see in the newspaper, Essie: this isn’t just girls in pretty petticoats and ribbons. We want change. Education. Choices. And the best thing I can do to further our cause is to educate girls. Those girls will educate more girls. Then they will demand a voice in parliament. Law courts. Hospitals. Anywhere you name, they will have to let women work there one day.’
Essie studied her too-big boots, hoping Miss Barnes could not see the doubt on her face. University for women? Higher office? Both seemed less likely than the vote for anyone from Essie’s part of London.
Miss Barnes placed her hands over Essie’s. They were warm.
‘Please, I beg you. Find a way for your mother to sign that letter.’
‘I will do my best.’
And she meant it. Gertie could finish her page of translations, spelling lists and algebra before most children finished the first set task. When Gertie drew a portrait it was as if she captured a person’s very soul. Gertie was more than clever—there were plenty of children in the class who were sharp-tongued, could do arithmetic in their heads or had the gift of the gab. But like Miss Barnes said, Gertie was special. Gertie’s sense of justice raged within her skinny chest like a candle wick just waiting to be lit. She belonged with Miss Barnes and those fierce women in white. Gertie could have a life beyond the factories and the stinking lanes of Southwark. Essie was going to find a way for Gertie not just to stay in school until she was fourteen, but to get the education she deserved.
Chapter 10
KATE
LONDON, PRESENT DAY
Kate had arranged to meet Bella Scott—her third cousin—for dinner at Covent Garden after work. They’d met as teenagers one summer at Rhode Island, when Bella’s mother had decided to research her family tree, then proceeded to drag her reluctant children all about the UK—and occasionally the US—to meet bewildered relatives and present them with a thoughtfully bound colour-coded copy.
Fortunately, Bella was close in age to Kate and Molly, and shared a love of surfing and romance novels. They’d pinch the books Bella’s mother Mary had bought at the second-hand bookstore, and escape to the pier to suck on milkshakes and swing their sandy legs in the wind as they devoured novel after novel, comparing plot points.
Molly would criticise the plots stridently: the heroine should rescue herself, she insisted, not wait to be rescued. Bella agreed. Kate was less fussed about plotlines; she’d developed an obsession with a series of racy novels set in Tudor times. Perhaps there was something in the water that summer, as she’d made a life’s work of other people’s histories.
Bella had never summered with the Kirbys in Rhode Island again; Mary had moved up the ladder to second and first cousins in Africa and the Bahamas. But Bella, Molly and Kate had remained firm friends, catching up whenever they found themselves in the same part of the world. Like Molly, Bella had become a lawyer, and Kate spent a few weeks in Bella’s first flat in Brixton when she’d interned at Christie’s one summer.
On this particular evening, Bella had texted to say she was running half an hour late for dinner, so Kate stood at the crowded bar of La Goccia and ordered a pink gin and tonic. The bar itself was a masterpiece—boasting oversized leaves and petals cast in bronze, with a matching bronze countertop, it was a botanical homage to the bar’s Covent Garden roots. Kate reached underneath the lip of the counter to trace her finger along the spine of an oak leaf.
She made a note to tell Marcus about this bar—it would be great to photograph the detail—but she pushed all thoughts of the photographer out of her mind as her drink arrived in a cut-glass tumbler with a spring of rosemary for stirring.
Kate carried her drink through the after-work crowd milling about under the chandeliers and out to a courtyard, where she sat at a table tucked between two oversized terracotta pots sprouting ferns and magnolias. Twilight bathed the cream walls, and the summer air was thick with the smell of jasmine and japonica. It was hard to believe, in this haven of tranquillity, that only metres away people were hurrying across ancient cobblestones on their way home from work or school or perhaps a shopping trip, pouring downstairs into the tube that would funnel them across London and beyond.
A waiter passed with a tray of onion and rosemary focaccia still fragrant from the pizza oven, and Kate ordered a serving for herself, along with some olives, before pulling her notebook from the tote at her feet. She hesitated for a moment, touching the second, more personal journal that lay underneath, still unopened.
Not yet.
She flipped open her workbook, leafing through the pages until she found the notes she was looking for. Underneath Essie’s sketches was a series of newspaper clippings she’d found in a manila folder titled London in her great-grandmother’s filing cabinet. She sipped on her gin as she flipped open the folder and scanned the faded newspaper clippings.
GERTRUDE FORD OPENS WOMEN’S CRISIS CENTRE IN SOUTHWARK.
JUSTICE GERTRUDE FORD APPOINTED TO BENCH IN EAST LONDON FAMILY COURT. CREDITS SUFFRAGETTES, HER TEACHER AND FAMILY.
GERTRUDE FORD BEQUESTS MEANS-TESTED SCHOLARSHIP TO ST HILDA’S COLLEGE, OXFORD.
Esther Kirby had been the mouthpiece for Boston suffragettes, so it didn’t seem unusual she would collect articles from her homeland about the education of women and the suffragette movement. Or her sister.
Kate felt her throat constrict, like someone was pressing against her thorax. She struggled to swallow and allowed the conversations swilling around the courtyard to wash over her. A waitress placed a bowl of black olives and warm focaccia on the table and Kate forced herself to speak. ‘Thank you.’
What would her life look like without Molly?
She remembered Molly snatching the Harvard-stamped envelope from Kate’s hand, ripping it open and her face falling as she realised that what it contained was not an acceptance letter identical to the one she herself had received the year before, but a rejection. ‘Oh, Kate. I’m sorry. That sucks …’
And again, just four years ago, as Molly had clutched the newborn Emma to her chest, trying to work out how to nurse her. Exhausted and clammy, with strands of hair stuck to her forehead, Molly had reached up to Kate and touched her cheek. Kate had lain down beside her sister on the narrow hospital bed with an arm cradled across Emma as she helped the baby attach to Molly’s raw nipple. Kate had remained on the bed, cradling her older sister and her sticky newborn niece, heart flooded with love, promising to keep them safe.