Ellie Pride. Annie Groves

      Ellie ached to ask if she might see her mother but her uncle and the midwife were still in the bedroom with her, and Ellie gave the closed door a helpless stare before accompanying her aunt downstairs.

      ‘It will be better if Connie and John stay at Winckley Square until…for now,’ Ellie’s aunt said as she paused in front of the hall mirror to pin on her hat.

      Aunt Amelia looked as though she had been crying, Ellie suddenly recognised, as she inclined her cheek for Ellie to kiss before opening the front door.

      It was a soft late spring night, with the sky full of stars. A lovers’ night. Shame and guilt filled Ellie. She longed to be able to see her mother and to beg her forgiveness; to promise her once more that she would never disobey her again! She felt sick and shaky, overwhelmed with love for her mother, and overwhelmed too by her own intense remorse. Her guilt would be branded into her for ever, Ellie told herself.

      Robert Pride looked down into the sunken face of his wife. Tears filled his eyes and his shoulders began to shake. Carefully he reached for her hand, hardly daring to touch it. She looked so fragile. So frail!

      ‘Robert?’

      He tensed at the thin, whispery sound of her voice. She had opened her eyes, and even they looked different somehow: opaque, almost devoid of their normal rich colour.

      ‘Lyddy, don’t try to talk. You have to rest.’ His voice broke as he tried to control his emotion. Curling her cold hand into his own he lifted it to his lips, kissing her icy fingers, as though he was trying to breathe warmth – and life – into them.

      ‘She cannot survive, Robert,’ Alfred had told him after the midwife had finished her business and left them on their own.

      ‘But she is alive,’ Robert had protested, ‘and the birth is over.’

      ‘The child has been born, but Lydia is…’ Alfred had coughed, plainly uncomfortable discussing something so intimate. ‘But there was…she…she is bleeding badly, Robert, and we cannot stem it. I had feared that this would be the outcome of her pregnancy.’

      ‘Bleeding? But surely you can do something to stop it.’ It was inconceivable to Robert that, having survived the appalling agony of the birth of their child, Lydia should not be safe.

      ‘We have done all that we can,’ Alfred had told him heavily. ‘The midwife and I have raised the foot of the bed and done everything we can do to stanch the flow, but I’m afraid…’

      As he spoke, Robert’s stomach had lurched. He had been vaguely aware of the midwife removing a pile of soiled bed linen, but he had not understood just what it meant.

      ‘I did warn you that this could happen,’ Alfred had reminded him sternly. ‘There was a similar problem with her previous birth, but then the child was not full term, and small. I must go now. There is nothing more I can do here. You must keep her quiet and still. The less she moves…’ He had shaken his head. ‘I’m afraid that it is only a matter of time, Robert. I shall return in the morning, but if…if you need me in the meantime…’ Awkwardly, he had patted Robert’s shoulder, sighing as he added, ‘I am afraid that Amelia is taking this very badly. Lyddy was…is her favourite sister and she feels…’

      Numbly, Robert had let him go.

      ‘Robert, I want to see Ellie. Where is she?’ As she spoke Lydia was struggling to sit up.

      Panic-stricken, Robert urged her to lie down. Beneath the covers she was swaddled in old sheets, wrapped around her to soak up the life draining from her.

      ‘Ellie…’ Lydia demanded weakly.

      ‘I shall bring her to you,’ Robert promised her. ‘Only lie still, my beloved. Please.’

      ‘Mother wants to see me?’

      It hurt Robert unbearably to see the relief and happiness brightening Ellie’s pale face.

      ‘Oh, then she is getting better!’ Eagerly she followed him upstairs, pushing open the bedroom door and hurrying to her mother’s side.

      The strong smell of carbolic still hung on the air but now it was overwhelmed by another smell, one that Robert recognised, but that he prayed both his wife and his daughter could not. How many times in the slaughterhouse had he breathed in that scent of hot blood? His throat closed and surreptitiously he wiped his hand over his eyes.

      Briefly, Ellie glanced at the baby as she sat down beside her mother.

      Robert followed the direction of her glance. The child at least was healthy in spite of its early arrival – a six-pound boy with a strong pair of lungs.

      As he looked towards Lydia, Robert thought he could already detect signs of death in her still features. Ellie, though, thank goodness, was oblivious to her mother’s real condition as she bent her head to kiss her tenderly.

      ‘Oh, Mama, Mama, I am so sorry that I made you angry,’ she whispered. ‘Please, please, say that you forgive me!’

      Quietly, Robert left the bedroom.

      ‘Ellie…please listen to me…’

      Tiredly, Lydia closed her eyes and fought to summon what was left of her strength. There was none of the familiar ache she had experienced after her previous live births, none of the deep but satisfying exhaustion that told of hard labour well done; none of the cleansing sense of freedom and euphoria; of maternal joy, only a deep numbing coldness that seemed to seep up her body in a slow tide that could not be escaped. She didn’t need to see the tears of her husband, or the anguish of her sister, to know what was happening to her. She had known it from the moment she had felt that dreadful tearing pain, which had seemed to wrench not only the child from her, but her very womb as well. Time was running out for her, and she doubted that she would see another dawn, which made it all the more imperative that she spoke with Ellie.

      ‘I am listening, Mama,’ Ellie told her emotionally.

      ‘Ellie, I want you to promise me never to see Gideon Walker again. I ask you for this promise not because I want you to suffer but because I want to protect you. My mother pleaded with me not to marry your father, but I would not listen. I believed that I knew better than she, and now look what has become of me. Your father is a good man and I would not have anyone say any other, but…but none of your aunts, my sisters, would ever find themselves in the situation that I am in. Men like your father and Gideon Walker, they…’ Weakly, she closed her eyes. How could she explain to Ellie the terrible price that women had to pay to appease the hungry sexuality of such men?

      ‘Your aunts, my sisters, know my wishes, Ellie…and my hopes for you and your sister. I want you to promise me that you will obey them in all things, and that you will remember that they are carrying out my wishes. I cannot bear to think that you may meet a fate like mine, Ellie…Promise me, Ellie…’

      Ellie started to cry, too overwrought to question logically what was happening, knowing only that right now her love for her mother took priority over everything and everyone else in her life.

      ‘Mama, please,’ she choked. ‘I will promise you whatever you want, if only you will forgive me…’

      ‘You will put Gideon Walker completely out of your life and your thoughts, and you will be guided by your aunts in all things, do you promise?’

      ‘I promise, Mama,’ Ellie sobbed.

      ‘Good. I want you to remember always that you have made me this promise, Ellie. To remember it and to honour it, because…’

      Her mother’s voice had become so faint that Ellie could barely hear it, and then suddenly she stopped speaking, her head falling to one side on the pillow.

      As she clung to her mother’s icy cold hand, Ellie could hear her breath rattling in her throat.

      ‘Oh, Mam, Mam, please, please get well,’ she begged heartbrokenly, reverting to the comforting softness of the town’s dialect as she