Free Molly's War by Maggie Hope Page B

An innocent little virgin, are you? I just bloody well
bet
you are!’
    The crowd murmured agreement, their mood growing ugly. They moved forward, hemming her in. Someone grabbed her other arm, the one holding the clock, and she dropped it.
    ‘Me mam’s clock!’ she cried, and pushed and shoved, taking Joe by surprise so that he let go of her and she bent down on the pavement, crying over the clock as though the world had come to an end.
    ‘It was me mam’s,’ she cried brokenly. ‘Look at it now, the marble’s all chipped. I bet it won’t work neither.’
    The old woman laughed. ‘It’s only an old clock,’ she said. ‘You won’t be needing a clock where you’re going, me lass.’
    ‘Now then, what’s going on here?’ a new voice said, and the crowd melted away as if by magic. Molly was left bending over the clock, trying to fix the glass door back on for it had come off in the fall. Miraculously, it hadn’t broken. She hardly heard what was being said by the men above her. The door on the clock went back on, albeit a bit crooked. She stood it carefully on the pavement and turned to her suitcase, pushing her things back into it, trying to get them even so she could close the lid. The catch wouldn’t work at first. She tried and tried with it and at last it clicked into place. She nearly cried with frustration. She should have a belt round it, she thought, that would work. One of her father’s belts, that was it.
    The policeman bent down and pulled her to her feet.
    ‘It’s no good taking on like that, lass,’ he said mildly. ‘You’ll just have to come along o’ me now. I want no fuss, mind.’
    ‘Where are we going?’ asked Molly. Suddenly she was exhausted, couldn’t fight any more, feeling like a bird in a trap.
    ‘Well, where do you think? The police station in Bondgate . You can’t go pinching things and get away Scot free, you know. A night in the cells will do you the world of good.’
    On the pavement, the clock began to chime, its tone sweet and silvery. It chimed six times. ‘See what they did,’ said Molly, more to herself than the policeman. ‘That can’t be right. It’s not six o’clock, surely?’
    ‘The lass is off her head,’ Bart Jones remarked.
    ‘Never mind that. You’re coming along an’ all, I want a statement from you. You, too, whatever your name is.’ He nodded at Joe.
    ‘I have to go to work the morn!’
    ‘Me an’ all,’ said Joe.
    ‘That’s matterless, you’re coming down to the station,’ the policeman said calmly. ‘Come on, the Black Maria’s at the end of the street.’
    ‘Why, yer bugger!’ said Joe, glaring at Molly. ‘I could be fast asleep in bed if it wasn’t for you. A fella’s just doing his duty and now I’m going to lose a morning’s pay for it. What’s the world coming to, I ask you?’
    ‘It’s the law,’ said the policeman. And, picking up Molly’s suitcase, led the way down the street.

Chapter Eight
    AT LEAST SHE didn’t have to worry about where she was going to sleep, thought Molly. She sat on the hard bed in a police cell in Bondgate and looked about her in total disbelief. How could this have happened? The cold struck through the bare stone walls but she didn’t feel it; she didn’t feel anything. There was a barred window set so high up the wall it was impossible to see through, a metal door with a peephole which denied her all privacy, a battered table and a chair.
    ‘Lights out in five minutes, lass,’ a policeman said through the peephole. ‘If I were you I’d try to get some sleep.’ He sounded quite kindly, she thought, and opened her mouth to appeal to him but he had gone. She could hear his footsteps retreating down the passage.
    She looked at the bed. A hard flock mattress. A lumpy striped pillow with no pillowslip. A brown blanket, clean but worn almost away in patches. She took off her shoes, thought about removing her dress but decided against it. She lay on the bed, covering herself with the