Page 39 of Mine before Dawn
The boy was fascinated with Africa.
He was thinking hard, as if rolling the idea in his head.
Then his face changed completely.
“Go?” he whispered.
Fear threaded instantly through his voice.
“Go where? What about school and my friends?”
Asha knew what he meant without him saying it.
He wondered if they were going back to London. Back to that house where his mother slept with a knife under her pillow to keep the bad man from coming in. Back to the cramped servant’s room beside the kitchen where she had spent days in fear with a chair wedged beneath the handle.
The son of the household had returned from university during her last year there.
He was educated and polished. And very much in love and engaged to a beautiful woman from a suitable, wealthy family.
None of that had stopped his eyes from lingering too long when she bent to clean.
Or his hands from wandering. At first, he tried charm.
Then, it had been brushing past her in the corridors. Things just got worse with him trapping her in the kitchen while his parents were out.
Questions murmured too close to her ear. He did not believe she meant it when she said 'no'. He did not care that her young son was watching with frightened eyes. Once, she had barely escaped him because his parents came home early.
One night they had woken to the sound of someone trying their bedroom door.
The next day she had managed to leave with all her belongings in the same worn suitcase she had brought from India about five years ago. The only difference was back then she was six months pregnant and hopeful. When she left, the boy was just over four years old.
She didn't have to tell her son anything. They both knew that London was no longer safe. So now when he heard that they were moving, terror flashed immediately across his face.
Asha touched his cheek gently with the back of her hand.
“Not London. I was thinking we will go north.”
He relaxed a fraction. She looked down at the map. A tiny smile tugged at the corner of her mouth despite the struggles ahead. Tanay studied the paper seriously, tracing the River Calder.
Asha leaned back against the rattling bus seat and rested her eyes briefly.
Beneath her sleeves she could feel the heavy gold bangles resting tight against her upper forearms. They were warm from her skin. She never left home without them. They had belonged to her great-great-grandmother once, back when her family still had land and servants and dignity instead of debt and desperation.
Her mother had slipped them onto her arms silently the day she left after marriage with an admonition never to take them off. The last thing truly given only to her.
Asha swallowed hard at the thought of giving them away. She had hoped to gift them to her son's bride someday. Or to her daughter.
But her son mattered more.
Her sanity mattered more.
Tomorrow she would ask Mavis where gold could be sold discreetly, even if it broke her heart to part with this last bit of security.
She opened her eyes again and turned to watch her son looking more animated than he had been in weeks. Maybe a fresh start was what they both needed.
“Where would you like to go? Shall we spin a coin like the last time?” she asked softly.
Tanay considered the map with immense seriousness, slowly sounding out place names. Then suddenly his face lit up for the first time in days.
