Sweet Things Dying - Prologue IV

Prologue IV

London

November 1886

Before his flat on Brick Lane, Cole had let a room in a lodging house. The room was a sliver of water-stained ceiling and mouse-chewed walls, with scuffed floorboards and a single panel of grimy window that kept out more light than it ever allowed in. A chipped washstand basin, a hook for his clothes and a plank covered with bedsheets were all the furnishings it provided. But it had a door that closed and gave some privacy, which made it somewhat worth the five pence per night he paid.

From the night Heather had first kissed him – and over the following days when her kisses had grown longer, more passionate – Cole had needed the privacy of his room. He’d returned to it with the steam of arousal pouring off his flesh. He’d lain on the bed, thinking about her until the tension became too much and he’d jumped up to the basin and jacked himself furiously into it. Only then, exhausted and relieved, could he sleep.

“It’s not much to look at it,” he told Heather as, taking her by the hand, they approached his lodgings. They had seen each other now for a little over a fortnight. She’d yet to see the embarrassment he lived in. This was her first visit and both were filled with excitement by the unspoken promise waiting to be fulfilled. “It is certainly not as nice your little rooms,” he added. “But as your rooms are off limits, so this will have to suffice.”

“This is all an adventure for me,” she said as they wound through a tight laneway. “So few lamps,” she remarked, squeezing his hand tighter. In this darkness, to let him go might mean never finding each other again.

“Trust me,” Cole said, “there is little worth seeing. It’s just too bad the darkness cannot hide the smells.”

He did his best to steer her around fallen drunks and fly her past public houses from which profane voices erupted.

While his lodgings were for men only, the night manager was persuaded with the quick passing of a tuppence to turn a blind eye to those who brought back company. Most dragged back gin-soaked whores, the best of them toothless and smeared in street grime. So the manager was shocked by the fresh young red-haired beauty in her neat dresses and bonnet who clung to Cole’s arm. He could have asked for double his usual bribe. But he was sure Cole couldn’t afford it – he must have spent every last penny he had luring such a pretty bit of West End cunny back to Whitechapel.