Redhill's Daughter

Episode four of Mrs Sunderbury And The Gold Earring.

Mrs Abigail Sunderbury sat on the train to Redhill and touched her left earlobe. It was tender and red, where the old gold hoop had once been. She felt flustered, put out, not quite herself, and this was not at all like her day-to-day efficient practical persona. How on earth had she managed to lose the bloody thing? She removed the other one carefully, putting it into her leather purse, and felt for the first time regret, and in far larger measure than she had expected. One minute she had been engrossed in the book, the passionate fantasy of her journey absenting her from the physical reality of the train; the next, the train had taken its revenge upon her, removing her balance and stealing her jewellery.

Aside from the odd and unaccustomed feeling of resentment towards an inanimate object, she realised that she also felt a long, blue note of sadness, like Miles Davis used to hit in the beatnik coffee shops she attended before deserting youth for stability. She wished she had worn any other earrings than these ones, and knew in her heart that she was missing something.

"Any tea, coffee, drinks, snacks?" The clattering, unwieldy trolley pushed by a smiling African down the slender aisle approached her, and she caught his eye, and said, "Cup of tea, please," but her voice caught slightly in her throat, and she coughed to cover up this unexpected display of emotion.

"That's one pound please," said the man gently, carefully placing the tea, with lid and paper napkin, on the table in front of her. She avoided meeting his eye whilst handing him the coin, and turned her head towards the suburbs of south London, as garden by garden, park by park, road bridge by rail bridge, her world steadily transformed itself into leafy, green Surrey.

She would soon be with Ilona, and she let the thought of her cousin comfort her, as the nodding rhythm of the train took her back to an earlier journey across Europe, many years previously. The hope that she had felt, the promise of new life, her youth ahead of her, her looks and figure intact - these were always the feelings she held onto, necessary to brave her total immersion in a new and alien culture, the way she was used to describing her past to herself and others; but now she remembered the fear of not knowing, the terror of leaving everything she knew, and the awful knowledge of her coming loneliness, and could do nothing but watch the sadness of that time seep under her well-washed mental linoleum.

* * * * * * * * * *

The night must have ended by now, she thought, but in the darkness, she couldn't tell. She knew she had to move soon, or else she felt she would be unable to move ever again. She thought maybe her leg was broken; she had been bleeding from a cut on her head, but that seemed to have stopped. Slowly she raised her hand to her head and felt the rough cut above her eye. She had got that for making noise at the wrong time. The wrong noise at the wrong time. She shuddered, and retched. Nothing came. She felt the awful creeping horror of withdrawal begin its massacre of her thinking mind. She could see practically nothing in this basement, only vaguely remembered entering the place with three or four other hopeless cunts a million years ago. She shifted slightly, fighting nausea, and squinted towards the only glint of light which spread like a dull fan under the thick steel-coated industrial door. Those bastards, they had ripped her off, raped her, knocked her out, stolen her shit. If she didn't get out, she was dead. And maybe she was dead anyway. But she wasn't going to stay here and go cold turkey.

She pulled herself half up, and lacking the energy to stand, her left leg throbbing incessantly, she pushed and slid across the smooth concrete floor. Twice she stopped to dry-retch. Gasping for breath, she pushed herself on until her wet forehead was resting on the metal. The door was heavy; she rammed her tiny arse into the rack, and wriggled until she had enough of her body in the crack to use her torso as a lever. The hinges made a loud groaning sound as the gap widened, and she stopped for a few seconds, heart pounding, scared. But nobody came, nobody heard. She could hear instead the drone of daytime traffic far above. Traffic=people=money=smack. She arched her bony body and pushed desperately at the door, and it gave sufficiently for her to squeeze through it. She left some of her light blonde hair sticking to the doorframe as she started up a long stairwell, and the wound above her eye opened up once again, but she noticed nothing. She just allowed the hard knot of need to pull her up and up, and eventually she stood outside, blinking, and shaking, at the end of a long alleyway.

She was filthy and cold. It was a dull day, raining slightly. She knew where she was roughly - she stood up and tested her bad leg. It was very painful. She started to limp down to the entrance, to where the cars and the people were. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. How long had she been there? At the end of the alley, there was wire fence with a hole in it. She was so small, she passed through it easily, and stood in York Way, facing Kings Cross. She caught sight of herself in a car mirror. Jesus, she thought, fucking holy Jesus. Where are you when I need you? Then she said aloud, "Mary Shervington, daughter of this Parish, twenty four years old, you fucking junkie whore piece of shit." A mother on the other side of the road pulled her child urgently onwards and out of earshot.

She looked closer at herself, smiled and winced - she looked much worse if she smiled. She decided to find a pub toilet and get cleaned up - it would help get her the cash she needed. The withdrawal was beginning to kick in and her stomach was cramping. Fighting the rising panic, she set off towards the huge station complex as fast as her damaged leg would take her.

End episode four.