The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp. Sarra Manning

Sedleys to go with the trinkets that Jemima Pinkerton would have wanted her to have, Becky had no assets. She didn’t even have a bank account.

      If she threw herself on the mercy of the state, she might be found a bed in a hostel and if she was really, really lucky she’d be given a zero-hours contract on minimum wage stacking shelves or working in a call centre. Which was fine. The world needed people to stack shelves and work in call centres, but Becky wasn’t one of those people. Just as George Wylie and Amelia and the five M’s had been born into wealth and privilege, Becky had been born with beauty and a native cunning. She was meant for more than a bed in a hostel and a zero-hours contract. Maybe she was meant for gracious country living. Wafting about a huge mansion, being spoiled by a very famous actor in his dotage. As soon as she could get a decent WiFi signal, Becky would google the hell out of Sir Pitt Crawley, she decided, and she straightened her posture and put her shoulders back. Down but not out. If she didn’t make the most of this opportunity that fate had thrown at her, then she deserved to be stacking shelves.

      *

      It was raining when Becky finally reached her destination: Mudbury. The light was fading and everything was grey as she came out of the station to find herself in a dismal little backwater, rather than a charming and bucolic village. It boasted a convenience store, which was closed, a pub, which was less of a charming country inn and more like a glorified Portakabin, and a bus-shelter covered in graffiti.

      Only one other person had got off the train and they had already got into a car that had been waiting outside the station and driven off.

      Babs had told her that someone would pick her up at the station but there were no signs of life. She squinted left, then right for the welcoming glow of a pair of headlights coming towards her, but all she could see was sheeting rain in all directions.

      Becky hurried over to the bus shelter but there was no timetable and from the barrenness of her surroundings, it was clear that Mudbury was the type of place where the bus only came once on market days and market days only happened every other week. She shivered inside her jacket. When she had left London, it had been late summer, the sun still shining, the weather warm enough that most days she didn’t even need a jacket. But in the course of four hours and two trains, winter had come.

      She debated waiting inside the pub. It might be quite cosy once she was inside – or she could be raped and murdered by a bunch of inbred villagers. Just when Becky had decided that at least she’d be dry even if she did have to fight them off with a pool cue, she heard the rumbling of an engine over the persistent drumming of the rain on the roof of the bus shelter. When she peered out, there were the headlights she was longing to see. She didn’t even care if it was her lift. She ran into the road to wave whoever it was down and beg them to take her back to civilisation. Or to the nearest mainline station, at least.

      The battered, ancient Land Rover came to a juddering halt and Becky scrabbled at the door handle, which swung open with help from inside.

      ‘You be the young lady coming up t’ Big House?’

      There was no light inside the vehicle, just two shadowy figures, one of which had just spoken to her in such a rough, local dialect that Becky had trouble understanding him.

      ‘I’m Becky Sharp and you’re late!’ she snapped. ‘Does Sir Crawley know that you’ve kept me waiting in the pouring rain?’

      There was a diffident grunt. Then, ‘Just light drizzle, lassie. Jump in. Don’t mind old Hodson. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

      It turned out that the shadowy figure closest to her was a dog; a big, hairy, foul-smelling beast that growled at Becky as she hefted her bags and herself into the Land Rover. The back of the Sedleys’ chauffeur-driven, air-conditioned Bentley already seemed as if it belonged to another world, another life, as the man sped off with a crunching of gears. The suspension was shot and the vehicle, and Becky, shook every time they hit a bump or a hole in the road.

      It was pitch black outside, but there didn’t seem to be anything to look at out of the windows, which were streaming with condensation. It was just country. Fields and hedges, and when they turned off on to a smaller road, more of a rugged track really, the branches from the overhanging trees skittered across the roof of the car and Becky stole a glance at the man driving.

      Her eyes had adjusted to the gloom by now and she could see that her saviour was a grizzled old man, though the grizzle was probably dirt, because he didn’t smell that fresh. In fact, she wasn’t sure which one of them was the most malodorous – the old man or Hodson, who kept wiping his slobbery snout on Becky’s shoulder. Most of the man’s face was obscured by a filthy trucker’s cap that was pulled down so she could only make out his mouth and chin, which didn’t look like it had seen a razor in months. His clothes looked and smelt filthy too: a pair of ragged trousers and an old jumper full of holes.

      He could be anyone. Maybe he’d lured many a young woman to a grisly end by picking them up outside the station. Maybe that was why the Crawleys needed a new nanny, because each new nanny was intercepted before she could start her new job.

      ‘Do you work for Sir Crawley, then?’ she asked, striving hard to keep the belligerence out of her voice. ‘Is it far to the house?’

      ‘Far enough.’

      Becky settled back with a tiny but discontent huff. She had done all that boxing with Jos, so if worst came to worst, she could whack him around the head followed up by a swift knee to his bollocks, then she’d run for her life.

      They rounded a bend at breakneck speed, which threw Becky against the door, and just as she righted herself, she could see that they were travelling up a drive lined by trees, and in the distance there was a big house, the warm glow of electric light at some of its many windows. They were crunching over gravel now as they drove around a big ornamental pond then veered left. Maybe her dreams of gracious country living were about to come true after all. Or maybe not.

      ‘This is Queen’s Crawley, is it?’ Becky asked as they whisked past the grand front door. She thought she might cry if they kept going, disappearing back into the darkness until they reached this man’s hovel and whatever terrible fate awaited her.

      They took a sharp right, just past the house, under an arch and Becky let out a shaky breath as they came to a jerky halt inside a yard, which must have been the old stable block.

      ‘Front door ain’t for the likes of us, is it?’ The man opened his door so he could cough then spit on to the gravel.

      Becky clenched her fists, felt Hodson’s hot breath on her neck again.

      Enough!

      ‘How dare you!’ she hissed, turning to the man so he could get the full benefit of her fury. She was so angry she could hardly force the words out. ‘Just wait until Sir Pitt Crawley hears about the way you’ve treated me.’ Even in the midst of her rage, she wasn’t going to admit that she’d been scared half to death. Wouldn’t give this … this … dim-witted yokel the satisfaction. ‘You’re rude and you’re inconsiderate and you smell like a rubbish tip!’

      She expected him to spit on the ground again. Or worse, spit on her, but he did neither, just took off his cap so Becky could see that his greasy hair was as neglected as the rest of him. He looked at her and grinned – she was surprised to see that his teeth weren’t blackened pegs but actually were even and gleamed white in the gloom – and there was an expectant air about him, as if he was waiting for Becky to say that she wouldn’t really go to Sir Pitt Crawley and do everything in her power to have him fired.

      In that case, he was going to be disappointed.

      ‘I might only be the nanny but I’m not some silly little girl who’s only used to dealing with naughty toddlers.’ She drew herself up. ‘You try something like this again, and I will make you sorry you were ever fucking born,’ she finished with a determined sniff.

      There was a moment’s silence as they both stared at each other, weighing up their enemy, then the man smiled again. He ran his fingers, nails black with dirt, through his hair, then offered his hand to Becky