John Farwell

Blackmail Boss

London was windy and cold as Gillian Blake walked onto Graysend Road in the direction-indicated to her by an impatient Londoner of the women's residence where she was to live until she could find another place of her own.

Stone, smoke and rain help give the city as it is called by the people from the country it's special character, and on this winter day, it was quite gloomy, the young woman thought as she looked up at the gray limestone building which must have been white originally but had acquired Its 'antique' finish through the layers of soot deposited on its facade year after year by the numerous factory chimneys that envelop London in its 'pea soup,' ghost-like atmosphere.

Anyway, the residence club, as it was called, would have been pleasant enough in the spring, but in February, it just looked cold and austere, unfriendly and forbidding. Gillian began wondering if she had done the right thing in coming to the capital, but where else could she go? She had to find work, time to settle down and forget the painful experience that her marriage and subsequent divorce had been, and London had seemed just the place.

Gillian brushed away her gloomy thoughts with a loose strand of hair and determinedly grabbed her small suitcase and entered the lobby of the building.

She was assigned a room with another woman, a girl about her own age who was also divorced. When she knocked at the door of her new room, her heart pounding with apprehension at the idea of living with somebody else, a cheery and rather loud voice told her to come in.

"I'm Gillian Blake," she said meekly, "I guess I'm your new roommate.

How d'you do?"

"Hello, I'm Jessica Evers," the other girl said. "Welcome to the home!"

She laughed and her whole face seemed to light up. Her make-up was too heavy, Gillian noticed, yet she had a kind of earthy, jovial quality that she couldn't quite pinpoint.

"I know it's not much," Jessica continued, "but with a little luck, you'll be out of here in a week or two, no one ever stays very long in this place!"

"Why are you still here if that's the case?" Gillian couldn't help asking her.

"Oh, I move in here between boyfriends," Jessica said nonchalantly,

"which happens to be the case at the time, but just give me a few days and I'll be on the move again!"