Page 24 of Ticket Out

“You don’t look too good, Gabby. You don’t have to bake if you’re not feeling it.”

“No, I like making bread. I feel better now than when I got home.” She straightened, realizing that was true. Making the bread had soothed her. “You want some tea? I told Mr. Rodney I’d make some after I was done with the bread.”

“Sure, ’n’ all.” Solomon sent her a laughing look. “Melvin said he saw you at Dance-A-Go-Go on Saturday.”

She nodded. “The girl who died, Patty, she was there the same night. I think she was killed just after, because she was still in the same dress she was wearing when I saw her in the club.”

Solomon had gone still. “What’d she look like, then?”

“Blonde. In a white dress with a black stripe down the front and across at the hips.”

“You told the coppers she was there?”

She nodded.

“I’ll just give Melvin the heads up. They’ll no doubt be round.” He turned to the door.

“Solomon.” She didn’t know she was going to call him back so vehemently, but he turned, eyes narrowed in surprise. “Please tell them to cooperate. I found her body.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “She was lying in that alley for over a day. I found her ’cause the rats were fighting over her. She deserves some justice.”

He hesitated. Gave a tiny nod. “I’ll tell Mel, but I don’t control the others. That’s not my playground.”

She was grateful for anything he could do. She gave a nod. “I didn’t like the man who was murdered in the car, though I didn’t think he deserved to die. But Patty . . .” She shook her head. “Someone has to pay.”

“Don’t hang your hopes on the coppers,” Solomon said. “Believe me when I say they can be bought.” He left with a friendly call out to his uncle, and Gabriella set about making the tea.

She brought it out into the garden which Mr. Rodney had made almost his permanent home since he’d moved in. The rain had eased off at lunch time, and the sun had made an appearance since the early afternoon. There was a cast-iron table and two chairs which Mr. Rodney had toweled off so they could sit, and she set down a pot and two cups and saucers, then went back in for the milk and sugar.

The smell of fresh-baked bread wafted out with her as she returned.

“You’re happy,” she observed as she poured the tea.

“I never thought I’d have a patch o’ garden,” Mr. Rodney said. “And Mr. Higgins took good care of it. Jerome says he’ll help me keep it up. I told him to be respectful of you, Gabby. No loud noises or funny business in my old flat.”

The timer went in the kitchen, and Gabriella left to take the bread out. It was crisp and golden brown. Perfect.

She stared down at it. She had spent every day churning out dozens of loaves onboard the ship that she’d taken from Melbourne, but this was the first loaf she’d made since she got to London.

It felt like a turning point.

She was settling in here, for as long as it took.

She had received a letter from her mother just the other day, begging her to come home, to give up her search for her father.

But her mother and Gino wanted to marry, and there was no way they could until her mother had a death certificate.

Her mother was sure her father had to be dead or he would have come back to her, or at the least let her know where he was.

But the more Gabriella enquired, the more she had to face the possibility that her father was not dead at all. That he had left Melbourne for London, and had simply decided not to come back.

He’d gone over to help settle his father’s estate. That’s what he’d told her mother. Whether that was really so, Gabriella had no way of knowing. But whatever the truth of it, from what she had managed to find out so far, her father, under the name her mother had known him, did not seem to exist.

Which—given she had her parents’ marriage certificate and her own birth certificate with her to aid her in her search—was clearly impossible.

chaptertwelve

She had just got backto her room and was in her tiny kitchen, about to cut into the half loaf she’d brought up from Mr. Rodney’s for her supper, when a knock came at the door.

Thinking it was either Solomon or Jerome, she opened it without asking who was there.

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