As it turned out, those ten minutes cost us dearly; before we could even get the suitcase loaded in the Kombi, an official looking man in an official looking suit arrived in an official looking car and handed an official looking bit of paper to Sally, who went sheet white as she read it. "What is it?" I demanded, my heart in my mouth.
Sally turned to me, her eyes wide with shock. "He's somehow managed to get an immediate removal order," she said, stunned. "I'm so sorry, Charlotte. He must've had this in his back pocket for months."
I felt as if the ground had opened up under me; the next thing I knew, Oliver had his arms wrapped tightly around me, and the sound of his heartbeat gradually brought me back to reality. "We shouldn't have delayed," I mumbled, horrified.
Oliver kissed my head. "It wouldn't have mattered," he murmured. "If Jim had this in his back pocket for months, then we were fucked from the start. Even if we'd got on the road immediately, they'd have caught up to us."
I closed my eyes, feeling like I wanted to be sick. "When does the order take effect"?" I asked, my voice muffled as I kept my face buried firmly in Oliver's chest.
As if in answer, there came a sharp knock on the door, and I pulled away, feeling my heart sink right to the soles of my feet. Sally went to get the door, while Oliver gave me one last, desperate kiss. Fanny then came over and hugged me tightly, murmuring broken apologies, and I hugged her just as hard, while Oliver hugged us both. We stayed like that right up until the moment more official looking men in official looking suits came to us and told us it was time for me to go.
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The town of Bodmin in Cornwall was quite pretty, but it was as far away from the Midlands as to be almost on the other side of the world. While it was larger than Roden Vale and had more facilities, I was cut off completely from friends, family, and anyone who gave two shits about me. In fact, Dad told me, that first evening, I was not allowed to even speak the names of anyone who'd given a hoot about me, be it Sally, Fanny, Oliver, or anyone else. I was, in essence, told to forget about that life completely.
I might've told him to go to hell, had we not moved into his Aunt Tempe's house. She had the temper of a fishwife, the mouth of a sailor, and she was extremely blunt and abrasive. I hated her on sight, and the feeling was mutual as she told me I was nothing more than a brat who ought to have been whipped. "You got off lightly living with your stepmother," she told me, "but you won't get away with it with me."
She soon proved to be right; her house was an old brewery, and it was even more haphazard than the house in St Albans, and it was twice as big. I was soon getting to know it on a very intimate basis; every morning I was woken up at the crack of dawn, shoved into old clothes, and put to work scrubbing floors, making beds, washing dishes, and a whole host of other duties. I didn't get to eat until Aunt Tempe deemed I'd done a good job, and it was sometimes several hours before I was permitted a slice of toast and a cup of tepid tea. Even then I had to eat and drink quickly before getting back to work. Dinner was just as hard won, but at least I got to have some tough beef, cold water, and one or two stale biscuits.
Sleep also became a luxury I had to work hard to earn; Aunt Tempe often kept me up past midnight, and only when she was satisfied was I finally allowed to have a cold shower and go to bed. But her bedroom was right next to mine, and she told me to always have the door open so she could "keep an ear out" on me. I suspected she wanted to hear if I started muttering or complaining to myself, but, seeing how she treated the other servants, I wisely refrained. Despite being five-foot-nothing and ninety pounds soaking wet, she had a very strong whip arm. Mabel, one of the other servants, had showed me the whip scars she still carried on her back my first night there, and that was all the incentive I needed to keep my mouth very firmly shut.
I wasn't allowed to speak to anyone other than Aunt Tempe in any case, and I always had to look her in the eye. Eye contact was the only way to be sure someone was telling the truth, she said firmly, and I soon learned quite quickly that you couldn't just give a vacant stare; you had to give your full and undivided attention. She had a frighteningly canny way of knowing when someone wasn't paying attention; the first two fingers of Barry's right hand would never work properly again, and once more, I learned by example.
I did thank my lucky stars in one aspect; I hadn't gotten pregnant by Oliver, for which I was immensely relieved. Any child of mine would've been taken away; Jenny had lost her baby to adoption when Aunt Tempe had caught her bent over the toilet one morning; Jenny's lover Hugh had been "sent away", and Jenny was never permitted to speak his name.
Time blended and melted into a seamless progression of backbreaking work, too little food, and too little sleep. But I learned to adapt, and though we weren't ever allowed to talk or socialise, I soon found myself making friends with the rest of the servants. We did sometimes manage a word or two in passing, during which I learned their stories, and they mine, but we took care to never linger; Aunt Tempe had a very nasty habit of forcing one servant to watch another be beaten if she suspected they were getting too close. That was usually enough to break up friendships she deemed "inappropriate".
I also learned how to pick up gossip, and, bit by bit, I pieced together the fate of those I'd been forced to leave behind. Fanny had moved to Reading, while Sally had moved back in with her family in Oxford. Ben, her lover - my uncle - had been "encouraged" to disown her and their unborn child, and Sally was now facing life as a single mother. Oliver had also returned to Oxford, heartbroken over being forced to part from me, and by all accounts, he didn't show any interest in dating anyone else. He apparently still held onto the cheap £2 ring we'd gotten from the supermarket what seemed a lifetime ago, and that gave me hope. I hadn't been allowed to keep mine - Dad had made me throw it away - but at least Oliver was still holding onto his. I didn't expect him to stay true to me forever, and as the days stretched into months, I hoped he would eventually find someone else who'd fill at least a little of the void in his heart.
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