The Orphans from Liverpool Lane

Eliza Morton The Orphans from Liverpool Lane Contents Prologue 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 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Acknowledgements The People’s Friend For Joel Prologue November 1944 When the child was born the sky split into bands of colour as a wintry sun set over the River Mersey and the dust of the city glittered in the golden hue. The young woman, ten days short of her twenty-third birthday, was astonished at how this perfect thing had slithered from her as she bit into her pillow and stifled a cry of – what? Pain? Sorrow? Intense joy? It seemed miraculous that her baby, so tiny and curled, was alive. Miraculous that all this time she had kept her secret from everyone, bound by the rags tied around her body and the lies clasped tightly as iron bands around her heart. The strange, sudden love she felt for this child squirming on the peg rug had pulled her up short and terrified her. Nine months had passed since, under a pale moon on the stone floor of her mother’s kitchen, feeling numb and cold under her bare back, with the light bulb swaying in and out of focus, she had weakened. Don’t, don’t . . . Don’t stop! she had said to the man who had promised her the world. And it was done. And now here she was, allowing herself for a moment to stare in awe at the tiny, velvety miracle, before the dock bell rang in the distance and shocked her into doing what she knew she must. The park gates were shut. Snow clouds were bulking the horizon, but she would wait here on a bench with her bundle until it grew dark. St Mary of the Blessed Angels, which she had passed so many times on her way to church, had a particular step worn smooth by time, and she knew she was one of many who had gone before her. Half an hour later, as snowflakes began to fall steadily, she kissed her baby girl’s soft head for the last time and tucked the blanket around her tiny body. Each stitch of the blanket that she had crocheted herself, each coloured thread, blue, green, yellow and red, had been a stitch of love. Her heart was breaking, and it was more than flesh and blood could stand, but it was time. ‘Another one,’ said Sister Cyril, after she had answered the doorbell. ‘That’s the third this month.’ She bent and picked up the baby from the step as the little hands seemed to instinctively reach out for her with tiny grasping fingers and nails like butter. ‘She hasn’t made a noise. Strange,’ she said to one of the sisters in the nursery. She pulled back the coverlet. ‘Oh, and aren’t you the bonniest,’ she murmured. After she had left the child to be dealt with by Sister Hilda, she walked down the dimly lit corridor, heels clacking on the polished floor, and picked up the telephone in her office. ‘Mrs Worboys? I have news. A girl. And she’s beautiful.’ Marcia and Cynthia, standing in the cold and unfamiliar dormitory room upstairs clutching suitcases and gas masks, had heard the doorbell too. They had gone to the small attic window hoping someone had come to collect them, that it had all been a mistake – after all, they were still dressed in their coats and hats – but all they had seen was a huddled, blurred figure scurrying away from the building, leaving footprints in the snow. ‘You’re the new girls?’ They turned and saw a slim, dark-haired girl standing in the doorway wearing a brown pinafore dress and battered plimsolls; she looked about eleven or twelve, like Marcia. Her bowl haircut was, Cynthia thought, about the worst thing that could have happened to a girl her age. No one wore their hair like that nowadays. Apart from girls who lived in orphanages. The girl plonked herself down on the end of one of the iron beds, her dress making a hammock between her wide-apart knees, and produced a pack of cigarettes from under the cuff of her sleeve. She lit one and offered up the pack. Marcia looked shocked, Cynthia less so, but both shook their heads politely. The slim girl shrugged. ‘I’m Ellie,’ she smiled. ‘The nuns said you were sisters. You don’t look like sisters. You can be my friends if you want. I’m dead famous, you know.’ ‘Famous?’ Cynthia’s eyes lit up. ‘Sort of. Me grandma were standing right underneath the first bomb the Germans dropped on Liverpool. Or nearly the first. Gram were the only person I had in the world. I had me picture in the Echo, though.’ She took a puff of her cigarette and blew a plume of smoke from the side of her mouth. ‘You’ll hate it here, but we can still have larks, doing over the nuns, that kind of malarkey.’ Marcia was unsure what that meant, but she didn’t like the sound of it. ‘We won’t be here long, will we, Cyn? Our parents are alive. It’s just . . .’ Marcia searched for words to explain the unexplainable. ‘Father Donnelly made us come. The nuns said it would be like a holiday,’ Cynthia said. Ellie took another casual puff and leaned back on her hands,