Ellie Pride. Annie Groves

any longer, and so Emma took employment elsewhere, which was how she met her husband. We kept up a correspondence for a while, until…until I quarrelled with my father and…and left home to go and live with friends in London.’

      ‘I am sorry if my investigations have brought you unhappiness.’ Frank Dawson gave a small cough. ‘There is, of course, the matter of my fees, but –’

      ‘No, no…I shall pay you now,’ Mary insisted firmly. ‘Do you have your account?’

      Relieved, Frank Dawson reached into his pocket for the invoice he had written before coming north. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Mary, it was just that he knew the way that rich folk could take their time about paying bills.

      ‘Oh…’ she began, and then checked. ‘I had heard that Emma had had a child, Mr Dawson, a son. I don’t know if…?’ Mary’s face had become slightly pink and she sounded a little nervous.

      ‘Oh, yes, I almost forgot,’ Frank Dawson responded. ‘I was that concerned about telling you that your nurse had passed away that I nearly overlooked the boy. It’s all here.’ He proudly removed a notebook from his pocket and tapped it with one thick forefinger. ‘A son born not a year after they had wed, he was.’

      ‘I see. And what do you know of this son, Mr Dawson, if anything?’

      ‘There is not much to know, ma’am, other than that he visits this town in his line of business. Well, not exactly his line of business, since he was apprenticed to a master cabinet-maker in Lancaster, but it seems that Master Wareing could not find work for the young man, having three sons of his own to take into the business, and so currently by all accounts Mr Gideon Walker is working for William Pride, a cattle drover, whilst he tries his luck at setting himself up in business as a cabinet-maker.’

      ‘A cabinet-maker…and he visits Preston regularly, you say? Goodness, you have been thorough and clever, Mr Dawson,’ Mary complimented him. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have an address where I might find him, would you? I may have come into my inheritance too late to do anything to reward Emma for her care of me, but perhaps I shall be able to benefit her son – for her sake and her kindness to me.’

      ‘Very worthy sentiments, if I may be so bold as to say, ma’am. As to the young man’s address, I shall do my best to discover it, ma’am, and once I have done so I shall send you a note of it,’ Dawson promised.

      ‘You are every bit as efficient as my friends promised, Mr Dawson,’ Mary smiled, discreetly adding an extra guinea to the money she was placing on the table in front of her. ‘And I am very grateful for what you have done.’

      After Frank Dawson had gone, Mary frowned into the silence of the room.

      There had been a time when Emma had been everything to her: mother, sister, friend, protector.

      The genteel poverty in which Mary had lived during her father’s lifetime, scraping a living giving private French lessons, had made it impossible for her to do anything to repay Emma for her care of her as a child, but now things were different.

      With so much renovation needing to be done on the house she could easily find work for a skilled cabinet-maker. And surely she owed it to Emma to do for her son what she could no longer do for Emma herself.

       SIX

      Newly returned from Lancaster, as always when he walked past the huge bulk of the Hawkins cotton mill on his way to his lodgings, Gideon was struck by its gauntness and the dark, sour shadow it threw across the narrow street. Not for anything would he want to work in such an environment, and he sincerely pitied those who must. As he turned off the main street and in through the ginnel that led to the yard that housed his lodgings, he saw Nancy walking towards him.

      ‘Still seeing that posh lady friend of yours, are you?’ she demanded, giving him a bold-eyed look. ‘’Cos if you ain’t…’

      A meaningful smile accompanied her words, but as she deliberately reached out and touched his bare forearm with her work-roughened hands, Gideon had to stop himself from protesting. Her touch was nothing like Ellie’s and it was almost a profanity even to think about his beloved in close proximity to a woman like Nancy.

      ‘Just wanted to thank you, like, for helping us out wi’ poor Peggy. Snuffed it, she did, of course. Best thing for her really. She was too far gone to risk what she did. Fair butchered her, that old Jezebel who calls herself a wisewoman did. Better she had had the brat and then left it on the doorstep of the foundling home – or, better still, with its father.’ Her face twisted into an ugly bitterness. ‘Not that he’d care to acknowledge it, nor what he gets up to wi’ lasses who can’t afford to say no to him.’

      Gideon didn’t know what to say. He had guessed what had happened to the girl. William Pride had spoken openly to him about the way some of the mill girls were forced to supplement their small incomes, and their resultant need of the illegal services of the town’s notorious ‘wisewoman’, who for a fee was willing to help terminate their unwanted pregnancies.

      ‘Poor little sods might just as well throw ’emselves int’ Ribble!’ he had told Gideon wryly. ‘At least that way ’ud be quicker and less painful.’

      Gideon had kept his own counsel, although he had found what he had been told disturbing.

      His landlady approached him as he walked into the house.

      ‘There’s a letter for you,’ she told him. ‘It came a couple of days back. Shall I fetch it?’

      Nodding, Gideon tried to conceal his impatience as he waited for her to return. He had made enquiries about a couple of shop premises, and maybe the letter was about one of them.

      When his landlady returned with a sealed envelope with his name written elegantly on it, Gideon resisted the temptation to tear it open straight away. She was watching him with open curiosity, but, sidestepping her, Gideon made for the stairs.

      Once inside his own room he ripped open the envelope, frowning a little as he read its contents.

      Disappointingly, it wasn’t about either of the shop premises he had visited. Instead, the letter declared that its writer was aware that he was a skilled cabinet-maker newly come to the town, and that she had some work she wished to discuss with him if he could make himself available at the address given on the letter when he was next in Preston.

      Ruefully Gideon reread it. Well, at least he had a potential offer of work, even if he did not have any premises, but he was warily conscious of the work he had done that had still not been paid for. This time he would behave a good deal less naïvely and trustingly when he visited his would-be customer.

      He studied the address. Winckley Square. Very posh. What exactly was it that Miss Mary Isherwood wanted him to make, he wondered.

      At least he would have some good news to tell Ellie. Whistling cheerfully under his breath, Gideon washed quickly and then put on fresh clothes. The last time he had been in Preston he had promised that he would take Ellie boating on the river. The thought of being with her made his heart lift in anticipation.

      ‘Oh, my poor head. What on earth is that dreadful noise?’

      Ellie sighed, trying not to betray either her impatience or her longing for Gideon’s promised arrival and her escape from the stuffy, claustrophobic atmosphere of her mother’s room and company.

      ‘It is the men who have come to install the new telephone,’ she replied as patiently as she could.

      Fretfully Lydia Pride pressed her hands to her temples. ‘I cannot understand why your father should have been so unthinking as to have them come round now when he knows that I am suffering from a bad headache.’

      Ellie said nothing. The truth was that her mother had been suffering from ‘a bad headache’ and an even worse temper on and off now for weeks, and Ellie