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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2018
Copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photographs © Gordon Crabb/alisoneldred.com (girl), Topical Press Agency/Stringer/Getty Images (background scene)
Cathy Sharp asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008286651
Ebook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008286668
Version: 2018-09-06
Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
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Eliza curled into a ball, crossing her arms over her stomach as the ache became a gnawing pain of hunger and she bit her lip to stop herself moaning. It was three days since she’d eaten anything, and she’d drunk only a few sips of water that Ruth had risked a beating to bring her just after she was shut up in here. Since then no one had come near. She was so cold that her fingers felt numb and her teeth were chattering. She believed she might die, locked in this dark cellar because of the mistress’s spite. She’d been beaten and thrown in this terrible place without a blanket or a mattress to lie on, all because she had told Mistress Simpkins that she was a liar.
‘You wicked, evil child!’ the incensed mistress of the workhouse had yelled at her. ‘How dare you say such a thing to me? How dare you speak to your betters in such a tone?’
‘You told us a lie.’ Eliza had stuck to her guns, despite her fear. ‘Tommy Hills died because you beat him for falling over when he was working but he was ill and – and it was your fault, because you withheld his rations,’ she ended defiantly, staring proudly at the woman who ran the female side of the workhouse. Tommy was not in Mistress Simpkins’ ward, but she’d given him the task of clearing a pile of heavy wood intended for repairs to the roof. He’d suffered with a malady of the lungs and he’d been coughing and gasping for breath when he staggered and fell, dropping an armful of the logs in front of the mistress. In a rage, Joan Simpkins had beaten the lad with the cane she carried at all times, striking him across his shoulders and arms until he’d collapsed into a heap on the ground at her feet.
Eliza had tried to help him and so had Ruth, but they’d been told to go about their business and the mistress had had one of the men carry him to the infirmary, where he’d died in the night. An infection of the lungs, so the mistress had told them, but the inmates all knew who was to blame. Only Eliza was foolish enough to say it out loud and now she was being punished for her audacity.
‘You are both disorderly and refractory,’ Mistress Simpkins said in a cold voice, ‘and you know the punishment for breaking the rules, girl. You will be put on short rations and removed to a place of solitude until you are suitably penitent.’
Eliza had stared at her defiantly, refusing to be cowed by the woman’s cruel threats and for that she received several hard blows across her face. She had been seized by the arm and dragged into the dismal punishment room and there she had been stripped by other women and forced to wear the filthy garb of one judged disorderly, after which she had been brought here to this dark place and thrust into it.
‘You are disobedient, a wicked evil girl,’ the mistress had told her. ‘It would serve you right if I just left you there and forgot you.’
She couldn’t do that! Ruth had told Eliza that the harsh rules of the workhouse allowed for the punishment she’d just been given, but surely the mistress could not leave her here to die? Yet Mistress Simpkins was a law unto herself. It was lawful for her to hire the inmates out for work because she was allowed to recover the costs of keeping them in the workhouse from any employer – and sometimes she charged far more than she was owed, which made it impossible for many to leave in order to take up work unless the employer was willing to pay. Ruth had told her that it was mostly men who