But the fantasy Alice had created over the years she had been at Netherlands felt sour that night. She kept her head under the pillow, tears exhausted. The matron had always cared about her, given her little treats and protected her – but she wouldn’t any longer. She would hate her now, now she had broken the horse …
Alice turned over onto her back. The sounds of the other girls’ breathing told her they were asleep as she crept over to the window and looked out through the wide bars. From where the dormitory was situated on the third floor, she could see the other wing of the home, the boys’ wing. Totally separated from the girls’ wing, the school sandwiched between the two, it could have been in another county. The children never mixed, went to church at different times and ate at different times. Segregated, all contact forbidden. Two independent entities, within sight, but never in touch.
Alice sighed. Far away she could just make out some lights on the Heights. She wanted to be out there. Longingly Alice remembered what she had seen that day: the streets, the shops, the people. Ethel had walked her across town, buses passing by them intermittently. She had even called into a greengrocer’s on the way home, holding tightly on to Alice’s hand. Mesmerised, Alice had looked at the ‘Epicure’ tins on the shelves and the mean-looking bacon slicer on the counter.
Beside her, a middle-aged woman in a fur wrap had waited patiently, her hat topped with feathers. Alice had stared at the woman. She was beautiful. Like her mother would be. She’d studied the woman, observing the dark brown hair, the strong attractive features, and the confident voice. Her mother was definitely just like that, Alice had thought, looking longingly after the woman as she left. Her mother was out there, somewhere. In these streets. She was alive. In fact, they might have passed her. She might even have been that woman …
Sighing at the memory, Alice continued to stare out of the window. She had been out of the home and she had seen the world. But now she was back in disgrace. Mrs Cummings wouldn’t invite her again. She would have to wait for years and years to escape. Until she was fourteen, when most of the Netherlands girls left to go out to work in service. Four whole years. Chilled, Alice shivered and slid back under the sheets, pulling her coat over her. Fighting tears, she tucked her cold hands into the pockets to warm them and then stiffened.
In the darkness her hand closed over a strange shape. A smooth, wooden shape. Carved in the image of a camel.
Clare Lees was going to put a stop to all this nonsense before it got out of hand. It was Ethel Cummings’s fault indirectly. You shouldn’t favour one child above the others. She should never have allowed it, but it had seemed a good idea at the time. God knows, Alice Rimmer needed to work off some of her excess energy. Stiffly Clare Lees rose to her feet, her neck aching. As though the child wasn’t enough of a handful already – and now this.
‘Come in!’ she barked, Alice walking into the gloomy office slowly. ‘Sit down.’
She did so, her eyes fixed on the principal.
‘Alice, I’ve been hearing some very silly things. Apparently you’ve been telling the other girls that your mother is coming back for you. She isn’t.’ It was better to be blunt, Clare Lees thought. No point letting the child live in a fool’s paradise.
‘She is,’ Alice said defiantly.
Clare Lees was unnerved by the vehemence of the girl’s retort.
‘Now look here,’ she said coldly, ‘I’m in charge of Netherlands, and what I say goes. You have always been a handful, Alice Rimmer, but I had thought lately that you were settling down. It appears that I was wrong.’
Alice was listening, her breathing fast.
‘You were abandoned here, and you have been cared for by Netherlands, due to the charity of others. You owe this home a debt of gratitude. Delusions of grandeur will not work here.’ Her eyes fixed on the girl, who still looked defiant. Clare’s dislike flared like a newly lit torch. ‘You are a nobody, Alice, a foundling. You have no family. No one’s coming back for you. They left you. They didn’t want you.’
Alice took in her breath, but said nothing.
‘When you leave here you’ll have to work and make your own way in this world. It is better,’ Clare Lees paused for effect, ‘to learn your place now. Life can be very hard, Alice. No one likes an upstart.’
Alice didn’t know what an upstart was, but she knew it was bad.
‘Remember – I can make your life here very difficult, if I choose to,’ Clare went on. ‘Extra duties, extra work – they could soon break your spirit and make you toe the line. But I’m giving you a chance. Mend your ways – and your manner – and you and I could still get on.’
Alice looked down. A triumphant Clare Lees read the action as submission and thought she had the upper hand.
‘Stop these fantasies. Stop talking to the other girls about your dream world. Stop pretending you’re better than everyone else.’ She walked over to Alice and looked down at her. ‘I expect you to change. Now. I want a calm, quiet, obedient girl. A girl who knows her place. Do I make myself clear? Well, do I?’
That night, Alice Rimmer ran away.
Alice had no idea where she was going, only that she had to get out of the home. She crept downstairs after everyone was in bed, stole out of the back entrance, crossed the yard, and climbed over the locked gates. No one saw her. When she jumped down on the other side she felt a rush of excitement. There was no one about, but then a late bus passed by, its wheels throwing up rain from the gutter.
If she was caught there would be hell to pay. She knew that. But somehow Alice didn’t care. What right had old Ma Lees to tell her that she was a no one? How did she know? You are a nobody. No one’s coming back for you … The words drummed into her head. A nobody. No one’s child … It wasn’t true! Alice thought helplessly, walking along the dark pavement and keeping to the shadow of the wall. She had had a mother and a father, everyone did. They must be alive somewhere. Somewhere outside. Where she now was.
But where could she begin looking? She imagined old Ma Lees’ face when she presented her parents to her; when she said, ‘Look, this is my father and this is my mother.’ Oh, she wouldn’t be so spiteful then, Alice thought. Not when she was a somebody, someone’s child, not a foundling to be pushed around.
The rain came down chill with the wind and made Alice shudder. The road which had looked so inviting was suddenly menacing, unfamiliar. A stout woman passed, looked at her curiously and then moved on. Alice paused momentarily outside a pub. The lights were on, the sound of raucous laughter drifting out into the dismal street. A song twanged haphazardly from an out-of-tune piano. Alice pressed her face to the etched glass. Inside she could just make out the backs of the customers, and smell the beer and cheap cigarette smoke. Then someone coughed, and a man staggered out of the door, pushing into her as he made his unsteady way home.
Her parents wouldn’t go to a place like this, Alice thought. They wouldn’t be smoking and drinking in some Salford backstreet pub.
‘Oi, you!’
She turned, startled by the man who had doubled back and was watching her, weaving unsteadily on his feet.
‘Wot you staring at?’
‘Nothing,’ Alice said sullenly, her fear making her belligerent. ‘What are you staring at?’
He leaned towards her, sour-breathed. ‘You nowt but a kid, wot you doing out so late? Waiting for yer father?’
‘My father isn’t in there!’ Alice said heatedly. ‘He’s … rich. He doesn’t come to places like this.’
Unexpectedly