I sat looking out of the train window as we sped southward, watching winter melting into glorious spring. There were new white lambs in fields, the first primroses on the embankments. My excitement grew as we neared London. I was on my own, truly on my own, for the first time in my life. For the first time I’d be making my own decisions, planning my own future—doing something. At this point I had no idea what I should be doing, but I reminded myself that it was the 1930s. Young ladies were allowed to do more than embroider, play piano, and paint watercolors. And London was a big city, teeming with opportunities for a bright young person like myself.

The bubble of enthusiasm had burst by the time I reached Rannoch House. It had started to rain just outside London and by the time we came into King’s Cross Station it was coming down in buckets. There were sorry-looking men lining up for a soup kitchen along Euston Road and beggars at every corner. I stepped out of the cab and let myself into a house as cold and dreary as Castle Rannoch had been. Rannoch House is on the north side of Belgrave Square. I remembered it as a place of bustle and laughter, always people coming and going to theaters, dinner parties, or on shopping expeditions. Now it lay shrouded in dust sheets, colder than the grave, and empty. The realization crept over me that this was the first time in my entire life that I had been all alone in a house. I looked back at the front door, half afraid and half excited. Was I stupid to have come alone to London? How was I going to cope on my own?

I’ll feel better after a nice bath and a cup of tea, I thought. I went up to my bedroom. The fireplace was empty, the fire unlaid. What I needed was a fire to cheer me up, but I had no idea how one set about laying a fire. In truth I had never seen a fire laid, or lit. One awoke to a merrily crackling fire, never having seen the maid who slipped into the room at six o’clock to light it. Fig expected me to hire a maid of all work, but I had no money to do so. So I was going to have to learn to do things for myself. But I really didn’t think I could face learning how to light a fire at this moment. I was tired, travel weary, and cold. I went through to the bathroom and started to run a bath. There was a good six inches of water in it before I realized that both taps were running cold water. The boiler had obviously been turned off and I had no idea what a boiler looked like or how I might get it going. I began to seriously question the folly of my rapid departure. Had I waited and planned better, I could surely have secured an invitation from someone who lived in a warm and comfortable house with servants to run my bath and make my tea.