Kensal Rise Methodist Church, north London – winter 1920
T HE SKIES WERE DARK with ice-filled clouds the day Elsie Cameron first spoke to Norman Thorne. Perhaps Elsie should have taken the gloom as an omen of what was to come. But could any girl predict that a man she met in church would hack her to pieces four years later in a place called Blackness Road?
Outside, the wind and sleet beat against the Gothic spire of the Kensal Rise church. Inside, the flock huddled in their coats and listened to the preacher. He thundered against the demon of drink, which stole a person’s moral sense. Cursed would be the man who hit out in temper. Or the woman who had sex before marriage.
Elsie Cameron, a small, plain 22-year-old with chewed fingernails and thick glasses, barely listened. She had heard it all before. It was a message of grinding despair to a lonely girl who suffered from depression. Elsie wanted to be loved. But the only love on offer in the chapel was God’s, and His love came with conditions.
Her gaze slid sideways towards the young man who sat with his father and stepmother in a nearby pew. Each time Elsie saw him her heart beat a little faster. He was four years younger than she was – eighteen – but he was handsome and he always smiled if he caught her eye. His name was Norman Thorne and he worked as a mechanic at Fiat Motors in Wembley.
Norman’s real mother had died when he was eight. At sixteen, he’d joined the Royal Naval Air Force to serve in the Great War. The war had ended three weeks after he arrived in Belgium and he never saw any fighting. But that didn’t matter to Elsie. Any lad who stood up for his country was a hero.
She worried about the age difference because she had a fear of being teased. Would people call her a cradle-snatcher if she persuaded him to walk out with her? But his work as a mechanic had filled him out. No one would guess he was only eighteen. Elsie bit nervously at her fingernails as she tried to think of a way to speak to him.
Her mother had taught her that only ‘loose’ women made the first move. Let the man come to you, she had said. But it hadn’t worked. Elsie’s brother and sister had no trouble finding girls and boys to ‘walk out’ with. But not Elsie. Elsie scared would-be husbands away. She was too intense, too swamping, too desperate.
She feared the things she wanted, and wanted the things she feared. She had nightmares about being left on the shelf – unwanted and unloved – but she couldn’t bring herself to flirt the way other girls did. The perfect man would be content to worship her until he put a ring on her finger. And only afterwards would anything of that sort happen.
There was a stubborn streak in Elsie’s nature that blamed others for her problems. It wasn’t her fault that she was plain. It was her parents’ fault. And it wasn’t her fault that she lacked friends. Only a fool would trust people who gossiped behind her back.
Elsie worked as a typist in a small firm in the City, but her colleagues had long since grown tired of her mood swings. They called her ‘difficult’ and grumbled about her mistakes. She resented them for it. She resented her boss, who took her to task for failing to do her job properly.
Once in a while – in the depths of despair – she wondered if her co-workers were right. Was she difficult? More often, she blamed them for making her unhappy. If people were nice to her, she would be nice back. But why should she have to be nice first?
It’s on such little things that life and death turn.
Would either have died if Norman hadn’t smiled?
As the congregation filed out of church, Norman Thorne was a pace or two ahead of Elsie. Deliberately, she trod on the back of his heel while pretending to search through her bag. His startled face turned towards her.
She gave a squeak of dismay. ‘Whoops!’ she exclaimed, clutching at his sleeve.
Norman put out his hand to steady her. ‘Are you all
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