The Orphan Collection by Maggie Hope

Author:Maggie Hope [Hope, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2017-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

‘Did you enjoy your walk?’ Eliza asked as Lottie walked into the kitchen, still wearing her bonnet and shawl. ‘Where’s Tot?’

‘He’s coming. Only I had to get on. I must go back and do some work.’

‘Not without your tea, surely? I’ve made egg and bacon pie – your favourite!’

‘Mrs Price gives us supper. She might be annoyed if I said I’d already eaten. I should have told her, you see.’

‘A cup of tea and a scone won’t hurt. Howay, take your bonnet off,’ Eliza insisted.

Lottie divested herself of her outdoor things and hung them up in the hall, thinking she could not offend Eliza. She was still in the hall when the door opened and Bertha Carr came in, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked and in an all-enveloping cloak.

Lottie’s pulse, which had begun racing inexplicably, settled down. For a moment she had thought it was Tot and she wasn’t quite ready to meet him again, not yet.

‘Now then, Lottie,’ said Bertha by way of greeting. She too took off her outdoor things and Lottie saw she was quite advanced in pregnancy.

Lottie murmured a greeting and smiled at the girl who had rescued her when she had run away from Alf Green and didn’t have anywhere to go. There was another bond between them: they were both workhouse children.

‘Eliza has been baking,’ she said, just above a whisper and Bertha smiled in understanding. Eliza’s pastry could be as tough and flat as cardboard or as light and fluffy as Bertha’s. It all depended on how long her mind wandered as she stood by the table with her hands in the mixture. This time Eliza’s pastry was a success. It smelled wonderful and tasted even better.

‘This is a nice surprise,’ she said to Bertha, while sliding a generous slice of pie on to her plate. ‘That Mrs Carr let you out, I mean.’

Bertha’s mother-in-law and Charlie himself thought a woman in an ‘interesting condition’ should hide away from the outside world until the baby was born.

Bertha nodded. ‘Aye, I know. But they are out visiting themselves. They’ve gone to see her brother, who is ailing. I slipped out while I had the chance. I’ll be back before they are: the brother lives up the dale, between Stanhope and Rookhope. I reckon they won’t be back for hours and hours.’

Lottie’s thoughts began to slip away as she thought of a plot for a new story, one where a young mother comes into labour when she is on her own, and her neighbours did not even know she was expecting a baby. She could weave an exciting tale around that, she reckoned.

‘You have to have some fresh air and exercise,’ said Eliza judiciously. This was the new thinking in midwifery circles.

‘I’ll walk back with you, Lottie. When you’re ready,’ Tot’s voice whispered in her ear. Lottie jumped and spilt her tea into her saucer. She had not even heard him come in and it flustered her.

‘No,’ she said, quite loudly, so that the two women glanced at her in surprise.

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