#complete disaster

Tom is pleased that she’s so easily satisfied; he doesn’t have to explain to anyone he knows why he’s with this ugly woman. He pays for clothes for her, but he doesn’t take her anywhere. When he’s bored with Merope, he tells her that he has to go out and then parties with his friends. She doesn’t question him. She doesn’t even consider doing so.

In May 1926, there’s a general strike. 

Roads all across Britain become impassible.  Buses have to barricade their windows. The strikers derail the train the Flying Scotsman in Northumberland. The government declares martial law. It even sends a warship to Newcastle. The world has turned upside down.

Merope hears about all this on the radio; it’s her main form of entertainment. She starts peppering him with questions. Why is the strike happening? Why is everyone so angry?

Tom is shaking and tense and can scarcely think coherently. How can these creatures, these underlings, rebel against the orderly system he’s been part of since birth?  And how can this--this daughter of a mere tramp question him?

He yells at her to shut up. He apologizes afterward, and Merope accepts his apology. But the bloom is off the rose now. She knows now that he can be pointlessly cruel, just like her father and brother.

She tries very hard not to know this.

The general strike ends after nine days. Martial law, however, drags on and on. So do transportation problems. And 1.7 million strikers are now out of work. This is not the bright, fun city Tom wanted to visit. 

June arrives. By now Merope’s adoration isn’t as intriguing to Tom, and her pregnancy is starting to show as well.  Like many men and boys of privileged backgrounds, Tom thinks of pregnancy as something that only happens if the woman wills it. He is sickened and outraged that Merope has gotten pregnant--to trap him, he’s sure--and he chews her out for this.

Merope, though, was painfully isolated while growing up. She knew only her father and brother. Her father warned her repeatedly  not to let a Muggle touch her...but he didn’t provide any clarifying details. She had no mother, no sisters, no female friends. She had no education to speak of. Porn was not conveniently available. And she could not read. 

So, faced with Tom’s rage, Merope is at sea, for nothing he says is making sense. She doesn’t know how menstruation, conception and pregnancy work. The world hasn’t bothered to tell her.

Also...partying would have eaten into Tom’s money anyway, but the general strike and its disruption of transportation has made goods like food much more expensive. Though Tom doesn’t want to admit it, his funds are running frighteningly low. He needs the good will of his parents to acquire more cash, and quickly He also needs to square matters with the  rich, upper-class, utterly suitable young woman he’s actually going to marry while assuring her that the Merope situation is no fault of his. 

Arguments begin breaking out daily, then hourly. Tom starts them, taunting Merope’s wall-eyes and ignorance. She despairs when she hears this--after all, mockery and derision are all she’d ever heard from her father and brother.   She loves Tom desperately, but he doesn’t love her.

She doesn’t yell, because she’s been trained since childhood not to. Instead, she begs him frantically, frenziedly not to leave her, because he's the one who knows how to handle this incomprehensible city.  But her panic repels Tom, who sees it as clingy manipulation. It’s only London, after all. There’s nothing to fear.

So one day he returns home--without telling Merope. She's escorted out of the hotel room shortly after that.  He didn’t stiff her with the bill, but not out of kindness. He simply doesn’t want anything, even a bill, tying him to her.

Merope is now alone and adrift in London.  No money. No marketable skills. No transportation beyond her own feet--she has no way of paying for buses or cabs, and she may not even know the Underground exists. And no home.  It’s August, maybe September of 1926.  A rainy August, a mild September.  She’s five or six months along.  And winter is coming.

It comes in October, with freezing cold for most of the month and a snowstorm on the 28th.

She’s been living rough for a month or two. The clothes she’d worn earlier that year aren’t warm enough for October, and the cold has begun to gnaw at her bones. She's starving, too, and by now she knows that countless Muggles, all more qualified for any job than she is, are also out of work, thanks to May’s general strike.

She doesn’t ask anyone else for help. She should, but Tom was the only Muggle she ever really knew--and he betrayed her. She can’t bring herself to  trust another.

And oh, she doesn’t dare go home. Even if she knew where it was and how to get there, her father would beat her to death for polluting the pure line of Gaunt with a Muggle’s get. And her brother Morfin would join in. Happily.

She begs--for food, mostly, though sometimes people give her money. Sometimes, too, they give her advice--to go to a church or a shelter or some government office. Merope nods and smiles and ignores the advice. She’s not going to trust the Muggle government after this past May, and she won’t shelter with dozens of Muggles. That would be suicide.

November 1926 is one of the wettest on record in the UK. Merope falls ill halfway through the month. She’s starting to have trouble breathing, and she’s tired and achy all the time. 

December is filled with bitter, Arctic chill. 

Merope has little strength left. She’s not getting enough air, somehow, and she’s constantly shaking with heat or cold, she doesn’t know which. Her vision is blurry, and even when she can obtain food, it’s hard to keep it down.

You’re dying, a voice says deep inside, and she knows the voice is right.

One day, she spots a building with lots of people caring for babies and children. She asks meekly, and someone--whoever tossed her a sixpence? another beggar?--tells her it’s an orphanage. Merope doesn’t know what that is, but she knows her baby would be better off inside the building than outside it. 

December 31, 1926 is a mild, sunny day. Merope thinks of it as a good omen...until the pains start.

Merope doesn’t know anything about childbirth; she simply feels as if she’s being ripped apart from the inside out. She screams, not even caring if the Muggles hear. 

Somehow, somehow, she manages to limp and crawl to the orphanage. She knocks on the door, which is the bravest thing she’s ever done. But her baby can’t survive a winter on the street. Maybe the Muggles will take care of him if they don’t know his mother was a witch.

She doesn’t even notice that she’s thinking of herself in the past tense.

A woman named Mrs. Cole answers the door and bustles her into a spare bedroom. It’s still unbearably cold, so cold that Merope thinks that her bones will shatter from shaking so hard, but there’s light and color and oh, it reminds her of the hotel room before everything went wrong. And Mrs. Cole is speaking to her in a kind, soothing tone and letting Merope grip her arms when the pains are bad. For the first time since Tom, Merope feels valued. Safe.

Her son is born at a minute to midnight, a scrawny scrap of humanity. Small wonder. Merope’s had little enough to eat for months. He has good strong lungs, though, which pleases her in a dim way. The world seems to be fading away, but that’s all right. She just wants to sleep.

She hears Mrs. Cole asking her something. Not her name--she told Mrs. Cole that before. Oh! The baby’s name.

There’s only one name she could give him--the one Muggle name that means anything to her. 

“Tom,” she murmurs. “Tom...Riddle...Jun--”