THE GIRL WHO DISAPPEARED

PART 2

Chapter 2 Trouble

As her twenty first birthday came closer, Emily began to realise just how easily her father could sabotage her plans if he discovered them. He would not be able to prevent her marrying Walter but they needed to catch their steamer to America after the ceremony and even two hours delay could make them miss it. She knew that her plans must be kept secret to have any chance of success and resolved to cooperate with her parents however outrageous their demands.

So on the Wednesday three days before her wedding, she stood with her head bowed behind a dining room chair whilst her father said his usual lengthy grace. After it, he paused and added in a superior tone of voice: 'Before we sit down, I have an important announcement to make'. Emily looked up discomforted to find him staring steadily at her, wearing a tight smile; her stomach knotted in fear.

'On Friday, we're having the Halifax Building Society manager, John Boothroyd, and his wife, Maud, over to dinner. They are bringing Lionel, their eldest son, to meet you. Lionel is just the sort of young man you should be mixing with.'

Emily tried to control the hot flush of anger that swept through her as she glared at the short plump man with his ridiculous ginger toothbrush moustache. At twenty years old she felt to be emancipated and free like her heroine, the suffragette Mary Ann Rawle, not a child to be dictated to by a father whom she no longer respected. Drawing herself up to her full five feet eight inches tall, she looked her father full in the face.

How could he do this? Did he really think that her head would be turned by a man just because he came from a 'respectable' family? She looked down at one of her favourite meals - guinea fowl, spinach and new potatoes - and felt sick; her father's announcement had killed her appetite. She took a deep breath and turned her gaze to her mother. 'May I please be excused?' she pleaded.

Her mother shook her head slowly, her eyes blazing with annoyance at her daughter's impudence. 'No you may not my girl,' her father roared. 'And what's more, you will be on your best behaviour on Friday night. There will be hell to pay if you embarrass yourself or your family.'

Nobody said a word for several minutes after that; Emily spent the rest of the meal with her head bowed, eating as little of her dinner as she considered necessary to placate her parents. She had grown up submitting to their will but this time a thought could not leave her head: 'I must get away from here and from my parents, these people are stifling me.'

***

That evening, Emily looked around her expensively decorated bedroom, adorned with pink floral wall-paper, and knew that her father looked upon his house as a status symbol. Well, there are far more important things in life than living in a big house, she told herself.

'My boyfriend, Walter, is an educated man whose ambitions will take him far away from Halifax; he went to the grammar school, graduated from university with a first class degree, holds a highly respectable job as a bank clerk at Lloyds Bank and I love him. Surely that's enough for any parent? It isn't Walter's fault that he comes from a working class background with a trade union leader as his father.'

The prospect of elopement added a thrill to what in any event promised to be the most exciting day in her life. But it wasn't just the wedding she looked forward to; over the last few weeks she and her husband to be had been secretly storing clothes in two steel cabin trunks tucked away in his father's house.

Immediately after the wedding, the newlyweds planned to travel to Liverpool and catch a Cunard liner to take up Walter's Fulbright scholarship. She confided to her favourite doll: 'I'm going to escape from Halifax and my domineering father. I really am and perhaps I will never come back. Just fancy, America!'