Kitty Little Read Free Page B

he pondered on whether she was worthy of further consideration. ‘You’re new to this line of business then?’
    ‘Is it so obvious?’
    He lit the pipe, producing a small bonfire before it settled to a slow burn. Having got it drawing to his satisfaction, he grunted and turned his back on her. Then just as Kitty prepared to turn away, despair having finally demolished her resolve, he pushed a grubby sheet of paper across the narrow counter. ‘There’s a list of agents. Give them a try. Though I don’t hold out much hope.’
    She caught up the list with surprise, and beamed at him with excited pleasure. ‘Thanks ever so.’
    His jaw fell slack, the pipe forgotten as his surprised gaze followed her as she strode away. She was neither plain nor in the least bit ordinary.
    Kitty walked the lengths of street after street till she decided she must have visited every address listed, and many she’d discovered on the way that were not, but had failed utterly to interest anyone into taking her on as a client.
    Like the porter, some refused to even admit her beyond the outer office. Those who did lectured her on the fierce competition, pointing out that half the country seemed to imagine they could act, or make their fortune in the music hall. They fired questions at her to which she could give no suitable answers, the main one being that of experience. Some asked her to do a little step dance or sing a little ditty. The moment she confessed she could do neither, they lost interest. Others offered to do what they could if she agreed to pay them a large sum up front for their services, which sounded a shady deal even to Kitty’s innocent ears. Such savings as she did possess were far too precious to be squandered without careful consideration. One even indicated he could most certainly find her work, in return for payment of a particular nature. Kitty had fled from that seedy office with all speed.
    It took five hours foot-slogging before she admitted defeat. The dream of being an actress, of treading the boards as these case-hardened agents called it, was just that: a dream. The idea, so sparkling and brilliant when she’d first conceived it, lighting a path to a marvellous new future, now lay tarnished and rusting in her mind. There seemed no way out of the rut into which Clara was resolutely funnelling her.
    Feet aching, feeling dejected and low, not to mention cold and wet, with even the weather turning to a drizzly rain as if to echo her mood, Kitty caught the next bus home and prepared herself for a lecture.

 
    Chapter Two
    Sundays were Esme Bield’s busiest day of the week. Even now as the second hymn bellowed out from Miss Agnes’s steadfast fingering and heavy footwork on the organ pedals, she was mustering the children ready to troop them next door to the Sunday school while her mind was counting the slices of cold ham she might manage to cut from the woefully small bit of hock left in the larder at home. Following this cold and unappetising repast, (no cooking allowed on this holy day) there would be barely time to wash the dishes before Esme must return for the afternoon Sunday School which began promptly at two-thirty. After that there would be tea. Plain bread and jam followed by the smallest slice of Madeira cake. Only then, while her father, the Reverend Andrew Bield, snored in his wing-backed chair, would Esme be free to snatch a few minutes of complete bliss in the privacy of her room to devour the latest romance she had procured from the penny library. A Sunday as predictable as any other.
    The organ let out its customary squeak, rather like a sigh of regret as it relinquished the final notes. As if primed by a starting pistol the children rose as one and crept down the aisle in a silent crocodile, too fearful of being struck down by the Almighty Himself to risk a whisper, or even a backward glance as they shuffled out through the side door, thankful only to be free of the heavy formality of the church