The sun is high in the sky when I wake. I blink into it and curse Lillie for opening the curtains and letting me lie for so long. Now I will have missed breakfast and Mama will send for a plate of scraps and force me to eat yesterday’s peelings and bacon rind, so that I will learn to respect mealtimes and the value of freshly prepared food. My belly shrinks at the thought.
I sigh and drape my arm over my face to shield my eyes from the sun. Where are the leather straps? I suddenly think. Why didn’t I wake when Mama came to release me?
Then it all comes rushing back and I catch my breath as I remember. Papa is dead and buried. Mama has washed her hands of me. I should be locked behind the doors of the madhouse, but instead I am here, in the dusty attic of strangers. Everything will be all right in the morning, Papa always used to say to me. But it never was. And it still isn’t.
I clamber from the bed and look around for my mourning gown. It is nowhere to be seen. But folded neatly on a stool are a plain wool dress and a clean chemise and petticoat. I pull them on quickly and slip my feet into my boots which I see have been cleaned of mud and polished. I need to be on my way. I have to get to Spaxton and find the Abode of Love. Henry Prince is the only one who can help me now. Receive me as the Son of God and your flesh will be liberated from sin in this world.
I will receive him, and I will be forgiven. I can start my life again and this time no one will think me bad or send me away to rot in the madhouse.
Downstairs in the cottage all is quiet, save for the gentle simmering of a kettle hanging over the fire. It is all so peaceful and ordered. The floor is swept and the table is scrubbed white. The door is open and a light breeze carries in the scents of stone and earth, the sweet smell of cows and grass and the dust of old grain. I should find George and Ada and thank them for their kindness, but suddenly I am in no hurry to leave. I breathe in the calm of it all. I have walked into someone else’s life and I want to live it for a while.
Just then, Ada comes huffing through the door clutching a weight of something in her apron. ‘Ah, here you are, my dear,’ she says. ‘I left you sleeping. Out for the count you were. Thought you must have needed it, mind. I took the liberty of washing out your gown for you. Mud scrubbed off just fine it did. It’s hanging outside drying beautifully.’ She pauses for breath and carefully empties the contents of her apron into a bowl. A dozen pale brown eggs clack into a pile.
‘Now then,’ she says. ‘I ’spect you’ll be ready for some breakfast. Eggs do you?’
I sit at the table and let Ada bustle around me. There’s no need to talk. She does enough for both of us. ‘It’s so good to have some company,’ she says. ‘Don’t get me wrong. George is a dear. Good heart on ’im he has. But he’s a man! And they’re only good for so much, aren’t they?’ She chuckles and cracks half a dozen eggs into a blackened pan and adds a dollop of butter. She whisks the eggs briskly and within a moment I can smell hot butter and melting yolks. She winks at me as she splashes some yellow cream into the pan. ‘Don’t tell George, will you? He only gets cream in ’is eggs on a Sunday.’
Soon, there is a plate in front of me, piled high with glistening scrambled eggs. Ada cuts a chunk of bread and drops it next to the plate. ‘Eat up, then,’ she urges me. There are no napkins and she makes no attempt to say Grace, so I do as she says and I spoon the eggs into my mouth. They are hot, buttery and delicious and a world away from the cold, tasteless eggs at Lions House. I eat every scrap and the bread too. Ada sits beside me and slurps a cup of tea. ‘That’s it,’ she chuckles. ‘You get it down you.’
I feel somehow as if I am doing her a great favour. And it is a good feeling.
After she has cleared the table, Ada asks if I would like to look around the farm. ‘If you’re not in too much of a hurry, that is?’
I tell her I would love to and her face lights up, like a pauper child who has been thrown an unexpected coin. She natters away, nineteen to the dozen, as she leads the way across the farmyard. I am introduced to all five of George and Ada’s cows and every single one of their dozen chickens. There’s a goat too, pegged out beside the barn. It is bleating plaintively. Ada fetches a bucket and with deft hands she milks the goat. She dips a cup into the bucket and offers me a taste. The milk is warm and thick with a strong tang of grass in it. I am not sure I like it all that well, but I tell Ada it is delicious anyway.
We walk past the barn to the small garden behind and I help Ada pull some weeds from between the rows of onions, carrots and turnips. ‘Our Mary used to do this,’ she tells me. ‘Before she passed on.’
‘Mary was your daughter?’ I ask.
Ada nods. ‘Such a good girl, she was. I miss her so much’
The words are like a slap in my face. I never knew this Mary and the poor girl is dead, but even so I cannot help but feel envious that she had a mother who loved her.
I stand and shake the soil from my skirt. ‘I must get on,’ I say. ‘My sister will be expecting me.’
Ada face falls. ‘So soon?’ she says. ‘But you must wait for George. He’s out in the field today. There’s fences need mending. Stay for another meal with us, at least.’
And because she smiles at me so honestly and because she makes me feel so wanted, it is as easy as that for her to persuade me to stay.
The morning winds into afternoon. I help Ada make a pie for supper. ‘I’ve been meaning to wring her neck for ages,’ she says of the henpecked chicken that goes into the pie.
Everything is so easy and drowsy. Ada asks no questions. She expects nothing of me, only my company, and by the time we sit down for supper, somehow, it is taken for granted that I will sleep the night again.
I want to ask George more about the Abode of Love, but Ada won’t hear of it. ‘We’ll have none of that talk,’ she says. And I think it is because she doesn’t want to be reminded that I will soon be on my way.
The evening passes quickly. George and Ada are born talkers and by the time the candles are lit I know all about how George first wooed Ada when he worked as a farmhand on her father’s farm, and how it took him a whole six months and almost a field’s worth of violets to persuade her to walk out with him. Ada laughs like a naughty child. ‘Still brings me a bunch of violets now and then when they’re in bloom. Don’t you, you old softy?’ Her eyes shine when she looks at him.
I know I will have to sneak away come morning. I won’t be able to say goodbye to them. It would be too easy to stay. But they are too good for me; I do not deserve their kindness. And if I stay, I will never get to the Abode of Love and Henry Prince will never be able to forgive me for all my badness.
I yawn behind my hand.
‘Look at you,’ Ada says. ‘Worn to a frazzle. Time to turn in, I reckon.’
I thank her for supper and before I can help myself, I put my arms around her and hug her quickly. ‘Oh, get on with you,’ she says. But her cheeks turn pink with pleasure.