if there are no guests, you may go out together in the afternoon providing you do not leave the grounds.’
Lavinia swallowed nervously.
‘I quite understand, ma’am, but you see I have two little brothers at the orphanage. The younger is only six. So I can only take a place where I am permitted to visit them. I had thought perhaps every other Sunday.’
Mrs Tanner, as she told Lady Corkberry later, was so surprised she did not know how to answer.
‘A personable young woman, m’lady, very nicely spoken. I did not know what to answer because I understand she wants to keep an eye on the brothers. Still, it wasn’t for me to go against your rules so I said I would speak to you.’
Lady Corkberry was a good woman. Taking Jem into her house when he had pneumonia was not an isolated kindness. She expected to serve her fellow men when the opportunity offered; that, in her opinion, was what great positions and possessions were for. It was not her custom to meet her junior maids for she left their care to those immediately in charge of them, but this was an exceptional case.
‘Very well, Tanner, I will see the young woman in the morning room after breakfast tomorrow.’
Although it was her first day, Lavinia found that after she had unpacked and changed she was expected to work, but not before she had eaten. Midday dinner was over in the servants’ hall, but there was plenty of food about. Mrs Smedley, a large red-faced woman, pointed to a table by the window.
‘Sit there.’ She nodded at a dark-haired, anxious-looking girl. ‘This is Clara. You share her room. Give her some dinner, Clara.’
Lavinia remembered her instructions.
‘Thank you, ma’am.’ She sat while Clara put in front of her a huge plate of cold meat with a large potato in its jacket, a jar of pickles, a loaf of bread, at least a pound of butter and a great hunk of cheese.
‘Eat up, girl,’ said Mrs Smedley. ‘You’ll find you need to keep your strength up here.’
After the food she had eaten at the orphanage Lavinia needed no encouragement.
‘My goodness,’ she thought, ‘if all the meals are like this it will be a great temptation to take some leavings in my pocket for the boys.’
Mrs Smedley was right about Lavinia needing to keep her strength up for she did find herself very tired before she stumbled behind Clara up to their attic. There had been guests for dinner, and after running to and fro waiting on Mrs Smedley all the evening there had been a great mound of washing-up to do in the scullery. Then, after a supper taken standing, the girls set to at their housework. Blackleading the range, hearthstoning the kitchen and scullery floors and a long passage.
‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ Clara groaned. ‘And we’ve been one short until you came. Sometimes I’ve been that tired I haven’t known how to get up the stairs.’
But in spite of going to bed late and rising early, Lavinia looked, Lady Corkberry thought, remarkably fresh and pretty when Mrs Tanner brought her to her the next morning.
‘The young person Beresford, m’lady,’ Mrs Tanner said, giving a curtsey.
It was clear Mrs Tanner meant to stay, but Lady Corkberry did not permit that.
‘Thank you, Tanner. You may leave us. Your name is Lavinia Beresford?’ she asked.
Lavinia curtseyed.
‘Yes, m’lady.’
‘And you have two brothers in the orphanage?’
‘Yes, m’lady. Which is why I asked if I could have time off every other Sunday. I must see they are all right.’
Several things were puzzling Lady Corkberry.
‘You speak very nicely. Where were you at school?’
Pain showed in Lavinia’s face.
‘We did lessons at home with my mother.’
Lady Corkberry looked sympathetic.
‘She taught you well. A pretty speaking voice is a great advantage.’ She hesitated. ‘You say you must see your brothers are all right. Surely you know they are all right at the orphanage. It is highly spoken of.’
Lavinia did not know how to answer. She did not want Lady Corkberry descending on the place for Matron would, of course, guess who had talked, which might make things harder for the boys. So she hedged.
‘It’s not what they are used to. It will be better when they settle down.’
Lady Corkberry could feel Lavinia was hiding something, but she did not want to bully the child.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Every other Sunday.’ Then she smiled. ‘Perhaps one day in the summer I might have the little boys here for a treat. You would like that?’
A flush spread over Lavinia’s face.
‘Oh, I would, m’lady. It will be something for them to look forward to.’
‘Very well. Now go back to your work. I will see what can be arranged.’
Because she enjoyed the school and truly was getting to love both Miss Snelston and Polly Jenkin, Margaret, though she still meant to run away, had no immediate plans to do so. This was not only because of her promise to Lavinia and that she was growing fond of Peter and Horry, but also because of her Sunday underclothes. Whenever she thought of that lace-edged petticoat and those drawers she was so full of rage she felt she could not run away until in some way she had paid Matron back. Poor Susan, on the walk to school, would have been bored to exhaustion with the lace on Margaret’s Sunday underclothes only Margaret was always inventing new things she would like to do to Matron and Susan enjoyed hearing about those.
‘I would like a great enormous saucepan full of frying fat,’ Margaret would whisper through the hood of her cape, ‘and I’d push her in and fry her and fry her until she was dead,’ or, another day: ‘I thought of something in bed last night. I would shut her up in a cupboard with thousands and thousands of hungry rats so they would eat every bit of her.’
But Margaret did not only plan horrible ends for Matron, she collected information about her from the children, particularly those who had been in the orphanage since they were babies. As a result, she gradually built up a picture of the way Matron managed things. She learnt that in May each year Matron had a holiday. She went up north, it was said, to visit a brother, and that was when – so the story went – she sold any clothes belonging to new orphans which were worth selling.
‘She goes away with a great big box,’ a child called Chloe told Margaret, ‘and it weighs ever such a lot because Mr Toms has to carry it’ – Mr Toms was the Beadle – ‘and he swears ever so, but when she comes back it’s so light anyone could carry it.’
‘Clothes wouldn’t weigh all that lot,’ said Margaret.
‘It’s not only clothes,’ Chloe whispered, ‘it’s food. Our food. Last year we nearly starved before she went so she could take a huge joint of beef to her brother, and sausages and pounds of cheese and that.’
‘How do you know?’ Margaret asked.
‘Winifred, of course. They think because she works in the kitchen she’s one of them, but she never is, she’s still one of us.’
Margaret, turning over these scraps of information in her head, saw that they made a pattern. Somehow, before Matron went away in May, she must get back the clothes Hannah had made for her. And somehow she must get hold of her jersey and skirt before she ran away.
Meanwhile,