The Hourglass Factory Read Online Free Page A

a rag with circus-style
lettering for its title, and the strapline, ‘The Greatest Newspaper on Earth’. The cartoon was perfect
Evening Gazette
material, Mr Stark had said. A group of women poised over
cakes and scones – her figurines were ‘superb’, he said, ‘just like
Punch
’ – while one was busy fixing to the teapot a long tube of the kind used in
Holloway Gaol to force-feed women on the hunger strike. Ebony Diamond had misquoted her. The caption was, ‘No Mildred, I think I’ll take it through the nose this time’.
    Mr Stark himself had called her into his office the Monday after it was published, shook her hand – the only time he had looked her in the eye – and offered her a Friday column which
he billed as a ‘guide to society’ with Twinkle, an ageing ‘lady about town’.
    ‘Look, I just need one photograph. You don’t have to say anything. But if I turn up without a picture, my editor’ll hang my guts for a laundry line.’
    ‘Get that thing out of my face.’ Ebony’s black skirts rustled as she pushed past Frankie. The traffic had cleared, creating an opening. Frankie ducked in her way, raising the
camera to face height.
    Suddenly Ebony lunged. As Frankie snapped the shutter, the full force of Ebony Diamond’s right hook whipped her jaw round. Ebony was as nimble as she was strong and her hands danced over
Frankie’s until she had a firm purchase on the camera. In one sharp movement she had ripped it away and was striding back towards the Fenwick’s woman.
    ‘It’s not mine. Give it back.’
    ‘You should have thought about that.’ Ebony tossed the camera to the ground and for one terrifying moment Frankie thought she might be about to stand on it.
    ‘It’s not mine, for pity’s sake!’
    Ebony took a step back, then reached across to the Fenwick’s woman and snatched the bottle of musk perfume out of her hand.
    ‘Have you gone mad?’ Frankie realised with a strike of horror what she was up to and could only watch as Ebony cracked the atomiser off the top of the bottle with the side of her
hand and poured perfume all over the camera. She reached into her dress pocket, pulled out a match, struck it off the sole of her boot and dropped it.
    Shoppers and clerks sprang back as blue-gold flames washed up the sides of the leather. The protective gloss began to sizzle and burn.
    Frankie scrambled forwards. ‘What d’you do that for? Off your onion, you are! You’re madder than a sack of cats.’ The heat scorched her hands as she tried to smother the
flames. Looking around her desperately she saw a hurdy-gurdy man with a tin cup of foul-coloured beer. She swooped on it, snatching it up, ignoring his protests, and tossed it quickly onto the
fire.
    Leathered smoke hissed into the air. The flames flattened then vanished. Frankie tentatively touched one of the brass tracks, and whipped her finger back as it scalded. Bits of the metal along
the sides had melted out of shape. She would have to take it to one of the clockmaker’s on Gray’s Inn Road before handing it back.
    She looked up and around her but there was no sign of Ebony. The London crowds had folded back into order. If she hadn’t been swallowed by the mob of people she had dissolved into the
thickening mist. Sitting back on her haunches on the cold ground, Frankie let out a long groan.
    This was just about the worst day she could remember since Mr Rodgers from the
Tottenham Evening News
made her hang around Southwark morgue for six hours waiting to catch a glimpse of a
man who had been savaged by a pig. She wished bitterly that she had taken the quoits tournament, or a divorce hearing, or stayed in bed and settled for no work. Anything but this mad, savage
suffragette.
    She climbed back to her feet and picked up the sodden, scorched malty-smelling camera. Traffic was careering along wildly, bodies began to push against her in their eagerness to get past. The
Fenwick’s woman was exclaiming ‘dear me,