Free Little Bones by Janette Jenkins Page A

pounding, a glass of water, saying she looked quite done-in and a sip of cold water always made things better. ‘Are you all right?’ asked the woman. ‘Would you like a little square of ginger cake?’
    Half an hour later Jane and the doctor attracted stares of amusement and disgust as they weaved their way home through the crowds and heavy traffic. Oh, they were a sorry sight! Jane, her head still swimming, appeared more crooked than ever, trying to guide the bulk of the doctor, whose legs seemed to have lost most of their solidity, his breath so full of aniseed booze you could almost see those rancid fumes escaping from his lips.
    ‘The pavement,’ he puzzled. ‘Why does it slip from my boots?’
    Outside the Cock, the boy was standing with his sign, and though Jane pretended not to see him, he saluted with a grin so wide it seemed his face was in danger of splitting. The doctor stumbled, then, holding onto a wall, vomited very quietly into the doorway of a shop selling high-quality leather goods, the owner now banging on the window, the doctor producing a few sweaty coins from his pocket, which the owner promptly refused, saying he was a good Christian man and disgusted.
    Back at Gilder Terrace, Edie made the doctor a cup of strong coffee. ‘I’ll tell the missus you’ve got a terrible headache then, shall I?’
    The doctor managed a wincing kind of nod. ‘And if you would oblige, could you help me up the stairs? I would ask Jane, but she has already seen me through those gates of hell they call the Strand, and she needs to see to that poor girl whom I have pitifully neglected. She can’t be on my conscience,’ he said, tapping the side of his head. ‘It’s standing room only up there.’
    When Jane had seen to the girl (who was now on her way home, head down, traversing the black pitted paving slabs, her coat flapping due to its recent lack of buttons), she walked aimlessly around the streets in wide uneasy circles. Near the Opera House a juggler threw plates to a woman in a fancy gold tutu, and she caught them with her eyes closed, though the lids had been painted with bronze-coloured irises. ‘My world is never dark!’ she told the crowd, and with a wave of applause they edged closer, and Jane moved with them, as a man shouted, ‘I could do that!’ The woman obliged him with a barrage of china, most of which he dropped, causing the juggler to hiss and bend his neck like an unsettled cobra.
    ‘You not scrubbing any floors today?’
    Turning awkwardly, Jane saw the boy, who had left his pious sandwich-boards propped against a wall.
    ‘I don’t scrub floors,’ she said.
    ‘So, what do you do for a living?’ he asked, pushing her gently towards the edge of the crowd. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, that is?’
    ‘I help a doctor,’ she told him, embarrassed by the words.
    ‘So you’re a nurse?’
    ‘Not exactly,’ she admitted. ‘I just mop up mess and hand him things.’
    The boy pulled a face. ‘You’re not carrying any diseases are you?’
    ‘Of course not, and why should you care?’
    ‘Because I’m standing right next to you, that’s why,’ he said, ‘and I’ve heard you can catch all sorts, just by breathing in air.’
    ‘And I’ve heard you die if you don’t.’
    ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ he asked.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Go on, cripple, force yourself.’
    They walked to Kelly’s Cabin, a small crowded place where the costermongers liked to spend their ten-minute break, drinking cups of cheap tea, standing around the tightly packed counter, and flirting with Maggie behind it. Cupping her hands around the pulsing warmth of the cup, Jane looked through the flat steamy window, where the world outside might be melting.
    The boy was called Ned, and told Jane he was almost fifteen. He was small for his age, with newly cropped hair and pale shrinking eyes. He didn’t seem shy, though Jane thought he should have been, talking about the preacher, now fast asleep in the Cock, and his