The Linnet Bird: A Novel by Linda Holeman Page B

away from Paradise. Some couldn’t wait; they only wanted a quick fumble in a doorway or alley.
    And of course Ram Munt had found me not long after I’d left Back Phoebe Anne Street. I wasn’t hiding, and even with Ram’s muddled thinking it wasn’t difficult for him to figure out where I might be.
    I saw him coming as I stood under a gaslight. I knew his rolling walk and the way his ears stood out from his head, and recognized that he was squiffed to the gills even in the darkness between the light poles. He was staring boldly into the faces of all the girls he passed, and I stepped even closer to the light, reaching under the back of my bonnet.
    Ram’s steps quickened to a bowlegged lopsided run when he realized it was me. I came toward him, arms wide as if to embrace him. When he reached me I put my left hand on his shoulder. Then I slid the glinting blade of my folding knife, honed to a deadly point, to the pulse in his neck.
    “Hello, Ram,” I breathed into his face. “I wondered how long it would be before I saw you here.” I pressed harder and the point broke the surface of his skin; a bright crimson bead welled up.
    Ram whimpered like a babe. “Linny, my girl, that’s no way to say hello to your old Da,” he said, his eyes shifting.
    I looked at the broken veins on his cheeks, the reddened, pocked surface of his nose, grown bulbous from drinking. Of course he was stronger than I, and even in his ale-addled state could surely manage to knock both me and the knife down before I could use it to cause any real harm—he knew it and I knew it. But I felt strangely powerful, standing in the circle of light. I had imagined this scene—the scene where I held a knife to Ram Munt—so many times over the last few years that I knew my face showed him that even after this short time, I wasn’t little Linny Munt anymore.
    “Go away, Ram. This is my home now. You don’t own me any longer.” I liked the sound of my voice as I spoke up to him.
    “Linny. Now Linny. Think it over.”
    One half of my mouth smiled. “Oh, I have, Ram. I have.”
    “Trouble, Linny?” It was Blue, come up behind me. Ram frowned at her.
    I smiled more fully, never taking my eyes off Ram. “No, Blue, no trouble. Just someone who thought he knew me. But he’s mistaken. He doesn’t know me after all.” I lowered the knife but kept it visible, the light glancing off it.
    Ram’s mouth opened, then closed. He glowered at me, looked at the knife one more time, then his gaze swung back to Blue. “She’ll rob you blind,” he growled. “And put on airs. A right sly little bitch, is this one. You’ll be sorry you took her on.”
    “I’ll be the judge, my man,” Blue said.
    Ram Munt turned and left. I watched him go and knew he wouldn’t bother me again. I was almost sorry I hadn’t sunk the knife deep into that pulsing vein when I’d had the chance. I realized it would have been easy to kill again. That the first killing is like losing the maidenhead—difficult, filled with pain and confusion. But once it’s been done, there can be no going back. There is little to prevent the next fuck. Or murder.
     

     
    S UMMER CAME, and customers were more plentiful. Standing outside with the warm night air on my face and arms, my feet neither cold nor wet, could be quite pleasant at times. I liked the camaraderie of the other girls; we would stand, arm in arm, watching for carriages slowing, sometimes cracking peanuts as we laughed and gossiped. It reminded me, in a small way, of my old friendship with Minnie and Jane, of standing in the court with my mother after dinner. I realized how lonely I’d been for the last years, and how tightly Ram had controlled me. I liked my independence; although I rarely turned down a customer, I knew I could, if he was too repulsive or suspicious. I liked the freedom of knowing that whatever I earned, I could keep half. I remembered the simple girlish dreams I’d shared with Minnie and Jane as we skipped