Sweet Satisfaction (Purple UGC Winner 2014)

Sweet Satisfaction - Twenty-Four

Twenty-Four

“Here they are.” I stepped over another trunk and reached the one Susanna was crouched next to. Her head remained in the bent-over position and her eyes didn’t meet mine. It was like that ever since Emma and hers altercation. Was she worried about Emma telling Father so she would be dismissed? I would fight for her job, I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. However, I couldn’t understand what Susanna had done for Emma to taunt her like that. Was it because she was my friend?

She handed me the Women Police Volunteers uniform, which I could barely see in the darkness we were folded into. It was silky and slippery to touch.

The dusty floorboards creaked as we made our way back to Susanna’s room. She had made it much more homely, with a new rug, patchwork pillows and second-hand yellowing volumes stacked messily on the dresser. I fingered the tarnished jewellery next to them.

“Don’t touch that.” Susanna’s squeaky voice startled me, “It was my mother’s.” I spun around, the pendant still dangling in my hand, thinking back to the argument with Emma.

“But-” I began to wonder but faltered at Susanna’s furious gaze.

“My parents were murdered,” she muttered.

I turned my back as she began to undress, ripping off her clothes, sniffing slightly. Murder? Swallowing hard, I turned the pendant over and over in my hands. The Kingston Crest was still clearly visible under the layers of filthy grey-black. I felt my jaw drop and eyes widen. Was Susanna related to me, or was she a thief like Beatrice?

Father never spoke of the wider Kingston family- his late father, mother Alice and younger sister Rose were scarcely mentioned. I didn’t even know any of my grandparents as Mother had fallen out with her family. A thrill of excitement shot through me at the thought of Susanna-

“Elsie, are you going to get dressed?” she asked. I turned around to see Susanna with one hand resting on a hip covered in the dark blue serge of the uniform and hair tucked under a low crowned bowler. I nodded, grabbing my matching set of clothes, the metal ‘W.P’ glinting prominently from the shoulder.

Soon after, we were patrolling the streets of Brighton, with two other girls, Felicity and-

“Beatrice!” I shrieked, throwing my arms around the wide-eyed, grinning girl, “How are you?”

“Quite alright, thank you. I’ve been raising money to help the war wounded,” she replied. Would a thief really raise money for other people? Was it a good thing seeing a ghost from the past, a past where Elsie wasn’t scarred deep down?

We turned into a street bordered by a park and on the side by terraced houses with rusting red rooftops.

“Let’s go in there,” Felicity pointed at the black iron park gate, tossing her bushy, honey-coloured hair. Beatrice and I followed, immersed in gossip.

“Elsie Knowlbodye, Elsie Nobody!” Beatrice sang.

“Oh, hush.” I faked a few giggles. Beatrice didn’t know anything about my life any more. She didn’t know what he had done to me. Susanna did. I saw her walking behind us. Alone. An orphan. I immediately felt guilty for neglecting her. My lips melted into a warm but sad smile, which she returned with wide eyes.

And then the niggling thoughts at the back of my mind all seemed to explode, unravelling before my eyes. The Zeppelins, Percy and Alice’s deaths, Beatrice supposedly stealing Rose’s whisky, Bobby’s secret notes and kiss, Mother’s outburst in the lift, John beating me, the ongoing war, Emma, Susanna…. everything I had on my guilty conscience.

I had tried to forget but every single minute they were chipping away at the now crumbling wall I had built around myself. How could I ignore these terrible, terrible facts? My head was hurting at the enormity of all of this and the pungent smell wafting up my nose.

The smoky, choking smell of fire.