Dr. McPherson, St. Luke’s Grove, Bockley, for services ... £15 12s.0d.
Total, £40 18s. 6d.!
Plus Parker’s bill, £60 3s. 10d.!
And she had £53 4s. 9d. to pay it with!
And there were yet a few more bills to come in!
And expenditure was still continuing, and no sign of being able to start earning again!
Madame Varegny was costing money at the rate of three guineas a week. There was not even fifty-three pounds four and nine in the bank, for Catherine had drawn out ten pounds for pocket money and half of that had gone on small expenses. She was faced with a problem. There was bound to be a big deficit on her balance-sheet.... When the first shock of the situation passed away she became quite cool and calculating.
She wrote cheques in payment of Parker’s, Mattocks’, Ratcliffe and Jones’, Thomas and Sons’, and Brigson’s bills. For they were shops at which she was forced to continue dealing, and which would have refused her credit if she had not settled promptly.
McPherson, she decided, could wait awhile....
On the bill of Hackworth, newsagents, she noticed items for books which she had never ordered. She enquired at the shop one day and was shown the detailed list. It included some, score paper-backed volumes by Charles Garvice.