The conductress had stomped heavily on to the upper deck, guarding the passengers’ heads from her ticket machine with her fingerless-gloved hands.
‘Any more fares please! You together?’
Cheek. Jane paid her fare and dug her book out of her coat pocket: Lady Be Good. As they reached Lambeth Bridge a huge drop of dark brown water landed splat on the page explaining how to tackle various hors d’oeuvres: Want him to think you mysterious and sophisticated? Don’t, whatever you do, order corn on the cob. She looked up to see the whole tobacco-stained ceiling trembling with tarry, fat droplets of condensation.
The night was colder still by the time they reached Norbury and Jane huddled inside her coat as she tripped along the lightless windows of the shopping parade. Vanda Modes – Vanda, honestly, the woman’s name was Edie. The huge walk-in windows were full of chipped, jazz-age mannequins dressed in snappy outfits, all identified with special labels (mis)printed on Vanda’s little machine as if Vanda were afraid that Norbury wouldn’t know the names for such clothes. Stylish gaberdine two-piece. Sporty ensomble. Casual jacket. Day-to-evening. Young seperates.
Jane had had a Saturday job with ‘Vanda’ as a schoolgirl. The windows might be full of winter fashions but at least a quarter of the turnover was corsets: slim pink boxes full of the things stacked in the light oak glass-fronted fixtures by size and length. White, pink, even black – service with a sneer here: either you were a slag or you didn’t wash your underwear, both, maybe, but never neither.