The Secret Letter. Kerry Barrett

our old house again. I’d walked down an alleyway where the back gardens of the houses on our former street met the back gardens of the next road along, but what I’d found was a group of women. A large group actually. They were all gathered in the street, staring up at a woman who was leaning out of the window of a house on the corner and talking.

      The houses were tall here – proud, I’d always thought – and the woman was small so she was using the window as a stage. It was clever.

      I’d stopped just where I was and listened, mesmerised. She talked about how women’s views needed to be represented and stated that she believed all women who paid taxes should be allowed to vote. I found myself nodding along, as her words struck a chord with me. It was as though this woman knew exactly how I was feeling. About how helpless I’d felt since my father’s death, how frustrated I was that I had no agency over my own life, and how absolutely furious it all made me.

      And then she said something that resonated with me – with the anger I felt inside.

      ‘We’ve been polite for forty years,’ she said. Standing in the street, I snorted. My mother was polite. She was too polite. She just went about her business, struggling through life and trying to keep her head above water, never arguing because it was unladylike. Never saying a bad word about my father, even though he’d left us with nothing.

      Above me, the woman was still speaking. ‘We’ve signed petitions and asked nicely and nothing has changed,’ she said. ‘It is time to adopt vigorous methods.’

      The women below her all cheered and the speaker carried on.

      ‘I believe the tide is turning,’ she said.

      ‘Coppers,’ someone near me shouted. ‘Clear away.’

      The woman disappeared back into the house and dropped the open sash window with a thud. The crowd melted away in seconds, leaving me lurking in the alleyway next to the back gate of my old house. I’d been so gripped by the woman’s words I’d not even registered where I was standing. There were shouts from the street ahead and I saw a policeman run past. I frowned. What did they care if some women gathered together to share their thoughts? I wondered. Why were they so scared?

      In front of me, the gate to the house opposite opened and the woman who’d been speaking peered out. She was elegant and well dressed and looked nothing like the sort of person who should be hiding from the long arm of the law.

      ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘The police are on the main road.’

      She smiled at me, but as she stepped into the alleyway we heard a man shout: ‘These houses have back gates. Check down the alley.’

      Her eyes met mine and without thinking I, Esther Watkins, who’d never done a thing wrong in my whole life, reached behind me and opened the gate to my old house.

      ‘Here,’ I said. ‘There’s a shed. The coppers won’t look there.’

      She paused for a second, obviously sizing me up, then having decided she could trust me, she darted across the alleyway and into my old back garden. I’d played so many games here as a child it was strange to be back and for a second I felt dizzy as the memories flooded into my mind.

      I sent up a prayer thanking God it was cold and drizzly and the children of the house were warm inside and not playing on the lawn, and I hurried the woman along the edge of the garden and into the potting shed.

      She’d taken off her gloves and hat and shaken her head.

      ‘I thought I was a goner there,’ she’d said. ‘Thank you.’ She stuck her hand out for me to shake. ‘I’m Christabel Pankhurst,’ she said.

      And that was the beginning.

      Now, standing in the shadow of my old family home, I felt suddenly more positive. The suffragettes were a sisterhood, I thought. The Women’s Social and Political Union – the proper name for the group of women who’d become the suffragettes – was led by Mrs Pankhurst and her daughters. We were all family as they were. The suffragettes were the reason I’d gone to jail, and the reason I’d lost my job, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt they would help me now.

      With new-found energy, I lifted my chin and strode out on to the main street. I’d find Mrs Pankhurst, I thought. She’d know what to do.

      The only problem I had was that I wasn’t completely sure where Mrs Pankhurst lived, or where I could find her. I had an inkling she was based in East London but I had no real idea where and I didn’t fancy wandering the streets until I stumbled upon a suffragette. Chewing my lip, I gazed up at the houses and tried to remember which window I’d seen Christabel speaking from. Could I knock there and ask if the occupants knew where I could find Mrs Pankhurst? They had to be sympathetic if they’d allowed her daughter to make a speech from their house. But I wasn’t completely sure which of the identical sashes it had been – nor which window belonged to which house.

      Unsure and nervous about intruding, I decided instead that I would head to Kennington. I’d been to several meetings at a house there, where a very active suffragette lived. I’d knock there and ask for directions to Mrs Pankhurst’s house.

      I glanced back over my shoulder at the home I’d grown up in. That life was all gone now. I may have been thrown out on to the streets by own mother and lost my job but I was part of something. Something bigger than just me …

      ‘OOF!’

      I gasped as the ground came up to meet me and all the air was pushed out of my lungs. I’d tripped over something and now I was sprawled face down on the pavement, the contents of my carpetbag scattered across the stones in front of me and to the side and no doubt behind me too.

      Carefully, I pushed myself up to sitting. My cheekbone was grazed and my nose was bleeding.

      ‘Oh, blimey,’ I said. ‘What now, Esther?’

      A man, hurrying along, stepped over my legs without looking down at me and then trod, with his mucky boots, on one of my underskirts that was lying in an undignified heap on the ground.

      I opened my mouth to shout at him but instead of angry words, all that came out was a sob. And once one sob had been released, I found I was powerless to stop the others. I sat on the pavement outside my former family home, bloodied and bruised, with my belongings strewn into the gutter, and I cried.

      ‘Need a hand?’

      I looked up, sniffing loudly. A young man stood there, his arm outstretched to help me. I grasped his hand and stood up, wincing as I did so. My cheek was sore and so, I discovered, was my arm.

      ‘What happened, Miss?’

      ‘I tripped, I think,’ I said, putting my fingers to my nose to see if it was still bleeding. ‘I fell and my bag split.’

      He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and gave it to me.

      ‘For your nose,’ he said. ‘I’ll pick everything up.’

      ‘Thank you.’ I was grateful to him for coming to my aid and for the handkerchief, which seemed to have stopped the bleeding.

      He scooped up my dresses, and a book that was in the gutter, and helped me put them all back in my bag.

      ‘I’ll let you get those bits,’ he said, gesturing with his head towards my underwear and avoiding my eye.

      Quickly, I gathered them up and stuffed them in too. ‘If I hold my bag in my arms, nothing can fall out,’ I said.

      He smiled at me. He was rather nice-looking, I thought, with dark blond hair falling over his forehead and a mischievous glint in his eye.

      ‘Very enterprising,’ he said.

      ‘I try my best.’

      ‘Where are you off to?’ the young man asked. ‘I’m just on my way to Lambeth Police Station. If you’re going that way, I can walk with you. Make sure you don’t come a cropper on the way.’

      My