on?’ she asked as politely as she could.
She took a seat and leant her head against the window, enjoying the cool sensation of the glass against her cheek, glad that she had escaped the party. She was lost in her thoughts when she realised that the conductor was shouting at her that it was her stop. She jumped out of her seat with a start, grabbed her suitcase and leapt off the bus.
The train station was almost deserted. It seemed to be colder than the rest of town, and smelt of smoke and soot.
‘Has the last train to London left yet?’ she asked the attendant anxiously.
He shook his head. ‘It goes in a couple of minutes.’
‘A single to Paddington then.’ She smiled with relief.
He told her the price and she reached to get her purse.
‘My purse, my handbag . . .’ she whispered with dawning horror. She felt sick as she realised that she had left her little black handbag on the bus.
‘That’s two shillings and sixpence,’ repeated the attendant.
‘I haven’t got any money,’ she croaked with panic.
The man shrugged apologetically.
Georgia ran into the street, but there was no sign of the bus. Sinking to the floor, her case wedged between her legs, she put her head in her hands as she heard a whistle blow and the last train leave for London.
She was stuck, stranded, she thought, feeling the cheese and pineapple nibbles curdle in her stomach.
Forcing herself to think, she realised that she had two options. There was a shilling in her pocket, left over from the taxi fare earlier, and she could use it either to get the bus back to the Fortescues’ or to make a phone call to Uncle Peter asking him to come and collect her. Neither option was appealing. Or was there a third way? she wondered, suddenly thinking about Edward Carlyle, who often popped into her head unbidden.
He lived in Oxford. Surely he wouldn’t be hard to find. Edward Carlyle. He would have to save her once again.
She found a small tobacconist’s shop that was still open and pleaded with the owner to show her a map that was for sale on the counter.
Remembering that Edward was at Christ Church, she located where she was now, and tried to find where the college was in relation to that. Then she left the shop and began to walk in the direction of Christ Church Meadow, down alleyways, past honey-coloured buildings and gated entrances through which she could glimpse quadrangles and gardens. It was almost dark and her suitcase was heavy, but although she wanted to get to Edward’s college as quickly as possible, there was something so bewitching about Oxford that she wanted to pause every few minutes to drink it in.
She took a left on to St Aldates, looking for the entrance to the college, realising with further panic that as it was Saturday night, he might not even be at home. Her heart pounding, she spotted a gateway marked Tom Tower, which from the map had looked as if it constituted part of the college.
‘Can I help you?’
An old man in a bowler hat by a porter’s lodge indicated that she should go no further.
‘I’m looking for Edward Carlyle,’ she said, putting down her suitcase. ‘He lives here.’
‘And you are?’
‘His cousin,’ she offered, not entirely convincingly. ‘I’ve been stranded in Oxford. I lost my bag in a taxi on my way to a debs’ ball . . .’
‘A debs’ ball?’ he said suspiciously.
She nodded more confidently, her little fiction gaining truth in her own head as she spoke it.
‘I need to speak to Cousin Edward and ask him to lend me some money to get to the venue. Otherwise I’ll be stranded and the host will be furious and the debutante whose party it is will be just devastated that I haven’t made it to probably the most important event of her life . . .’
She felt a little spike of guilt, remembering her escape from the festivities. She wondered if Sally had found the note and alerted anyone to her disappearance.
‘Stranded, you say?’ said the old man. ‘In which case, I had better enquire as to his whereabouts . . . Wait here, please, Miss . . .’
‘Hamilton. Georgia Hamilton. Related on my mother’s side,’ she added quickly.
The porter frowned and disappeared down a stone path across a quadrangle with a beautiful stone fountain in the centre sending feathers of water into the night sky.