‘Would you like to go up to bed?’ Sarah asked gently. ‘I can light the fire in your room. You look worn out. Perhaps a rest would see you right.’
‘It will take more than a rest.’ The edge in her grandmother’s voice made Sarah start back in her chair. Ada noticed her reaction.
‘I’m sorry, Sarah,’ she said. ‘I didn’t intend that to sound as it did.’ She shook her head slowly from side to side.
‘So how are they now?’ Sarah asked. ‘Were they well when you left? Were you able to heal their sickness?’
Ada turned an uncomprehending look on Sarah before she shook her head again.
‘I’m so sorry. It feels as though I have been away a lifetime. Of course, why would you know what has been going on?’
She stopped and Sarah waited, frowning. Her grandmother was talking in riddles.
‘Sarah, they’ve gone.’ Ada’s voice caught on a sob.
It was Sarah’s turn to look baffled. Gone where? What did she mean? Had they moved somewhere else to find work?
‘Sarah, they’re dead. They lasted barely two days after I arrived. First Mary, for she must have fallen sick first, then Jane, then Ellen. Daniel and I took it in turns to sit up with them through the night but there was nothing to be done. They were too weak when I got there. If that useless wastrel of a father of yours had only thought to get in touch, perhaps I would have got there earlier and things might have been different. But he was too concerned with protecting himself. He scarpered at the first sign of illness. Went off to his fancy woman on the other side of town, by all accounts.’
Ada’s voice was scornful, then her tone softened. ‘I thought Daniel’s heart would break when Ellen left us. Turned out he was sweet on her even though she’s –’ Ada paused and corrected herself ‘– she was but fifteen years old.’
Sarah had sat in numbed silence throughout. Was she hearing aright? Had she really lost her mother and sisters for ever? She swallowed hard and tried to find her voice, but it came out as a croak.
‘Where … How … Are they …?’ She couldn’t put into words what she wanted to ask.
‘They’re buried,’ Ada said. ‘I was able to save them from a pauper’s grave, at least. They’re in the churchyard at St Faith’s. It turns out that Mary had been known to go there on occasion. It seems she felt more of a welcome there than at the Methodist chapel, on account of her drinking.’ Ada’s mouth had twisted into a grimace.
‘All buried?’ Sarah’s voice was little more than a whisper. She couldn’t believe that she would never see Ellen or Jane again. She could see her sisters as clear as day, just as they were the last time she had seen them as she was waving them off to start their new lives in Manchester. They were surrounded by sunlight and waving and blowing kisses from the back of the cart, promising to come and visit soon, telling her to come and see them as soon as they were settled.
‘Yesterday,’ Ada said. ‘I’m sorry that there was no time to send word.’ She spoke flatly; the last few days had drained her of all emotion.
Sarah got up slowly, went over to her grandmother and wrapped her arms around her.
‘Was it terrible?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Indeed it was.’
Ada clung to her granddaughter, who stayed there, awkwardly bent over her. Neither of them shed a tear but both of them were staring into their own personal abyss of horror, Ada’s consisting of what she had witnessed, Sarah’s of what she imagined.
That night Ada, exhausted by her journey and the emotion of the last few days, slept well. Sarah, in the bedroom next door, paced the floor and wept. The fire in the bedroom grate cast a welcome glow around the room, which only served to remind Sarah of how her siblings had ended their days. Starved of food and heat, and so stricken by poverty they were huddled together in the same bed in the one room they had to call their own. How had they arrived at such a state?
She felt a surge of hatred towards her father, whose callous behaviour had surely made a bad situation much, much worse. Other than him, Sarah wasn’t sure where next to direct her anger. Towards the mill-owners? She felt sure they had overworked her sisters and her mother until they were exhausted, their health damaged to such an extent that they were unable to fight off the sickness that afflicted them. Towards her mother? Why had she failed to protect her family? Towards her grandmother? Why had she not thought to visit and to check on her daughter and granddaughters?
Finally, Sarah chastised herself. Why had she not gone to see the family in all the time that they had been in Manchester? She’d sent messages in the letters that her grandmother wrote and she’d often thought about Jane and Ellen as she’d gone about her daily business. A walk over the fields on a hot day had reminded her of the time when she and her sisters had set about picking every flower in that particular field that they could find. When they’d arrived home with armfuls of blooms, most of them wilted beyond help, they’d been roundly scolded by Ada. She had explained to them that their actions might prevent the same flowers growing in the field in future years because they’d robbed them of the chance to set seed.
Whenever Sarah passed that way in the summer now she would automatically check, with a sense of anxiety, how many flowers she could see. She would mentally tick them off: yellow rattle, field scabious, hedge parsley, creeping buttercup, ox-eye daisy, meadow saxifrage, tufted vetch.
She could visualise the scene on that day now, as if she was watching it from above with herself within it. Three young girls, dressed in faded pinafores and summer blouses, their hair different shades of brown and pulled back into pigtails and a little unruly, with curls escaping and sticking damply to their foreheads and necks under the heat of the sun. She could hear their squeals and giggles as they darted here and there, in search of new varieties to add to their flower bunches, batting away the bees that followed them, puzzled by the constantly moving sources of pollen.
Ellen, who had something of the artist in her, had contrived a bunch in which the different shapes and colours of the flowers somehow seemed to complement each other, and she’d surrounded the bunch with feathery grasses picked from the edge of the field. Jane and Sarah had simply greedily grabbed everything they could find and the result was a mishmash of colour, quickly spoilt by the tightness of the grip of their small hands.
It was Sarah, as the eldest, who had got into the most trouble for their actions that day. Now, nearly ten years on, she was pierced by a terrible sense of failure. As the eldest, why hadn’t she made it her business to know what was going on in her sisters’ lives? If she’d imagined their life in the city at all she’d thought it must be better than her own, had assumed that they were earning enough money to live reasonably well.
Now she wondered why some sixth sense hadn’t told her what was happening. She’d been disappointed that they had been unable to come to her wedding and now … now, she was faced with the knowledge of what they had been going through in their own lives while she’d been oblivious to it, selfishly focused on herself. When she finally climbed into bed she tossed and turned, racked with guilt. Why was she still alive while they were dead?
Dead – she found it hard to even contemplate the idea, the fact that she would never see them again. She was alone in the world now, or so it felt. Her father was still alive, but what part had he played in her upbringing? None that she could recall. He was as good as a stranger to her. So now she just had her grandmother.
With