Ellie Pride. Annie Groves

of her last child.

      ‘Are you sure you want to go to Aunt Gibson’s, Mother?’ Ellie asked anxiously.

      Her mother had told her earlier in the week that she was to have another child, and this confidence had confirmed to Ellie her status in the household of a grown-up and adult daughter, and not a child. She had automatically begun to mother Lydia in much the same busy way she did her own younger siblings, and Lydia, exhausted by the sickness of her early months of pregnancy and her fear, had wearily allowed her to do so.

      She still had her sisters to face. By now Amelia’s doctor husband was bound to have informed his wife of her condition. Which was, no doubt, why Amelia had summoned her to take tea with her this afternoon.

      ‘The walk will do me good,’ Lydia responded.

      They were almost in February, and the cold air misted their breath as Ellie and her mother stepped out into the street.

      ‘Gideon is so good, offering to bring John a puppy,’ Ellie commented happily to her mother as they walked towards Winckley Square.

      ‘He is certainly a very handsome and determined young man,’ Lydia agreed coolly, ‘but as to him being “good”…’

      Ellie gave her mother a surprised look. ‘I thought you liked him.’

      ‘I do,’ Lydia agreed. ‘But…’ She paused and shook her head.

      ‘But what, Mother?’

      But Lydia refused to be drawn.

      They had reached Winckley Square now, and stopped in surprise at the comings and goings at the large mansion on the opposite side of the square to the Gibsons.

      ‘It looks as though someone is moving into Mr Isherwood’s old house,’ Ellie commented.

      It was over a month since the elderly widowed mill owner, who had lived in the house, had died, and despite the busyness of the removal men, the house still had an air of bleakness about it.

      Ten minutes after they had been shown into Amelia Gibson’s parlour, Lydia asked her sister, ‘Has the Isherwood house been sold, only we saw someone moving in when we walked past?’

      ‘No,’ Amelia replied. ‘It seems that Mr Isherwood’s daughter has decided to return to Preston. She was his only heir and, despite the fact that they quarrelled so badly that she left home, he left everything to her, apparently. I shall call and leave a card, of course, but I must say I always thought her rather odd. I mean, going off to London like that to live virtually on her own…

      ‘You look very pale, Lydia,’ she announced, changing the subject. ‘How are you feeling?’

      ‘I am well enough,’ Lydia replied.

      As she stood protectively beside her mother, Ellie saw the sisters exchanging looks.

      ‘Ellie, why don’t you go upstairs and join your cousins?’ Amelia suggested firmly.

      A little uncertainly, Ellie looked at her mother.

      ‘Yes, Ellie,’ Lydia agreed. ‘Do as your aunt says.’

      Obediently, Ellie got up, but once she was outside the parlour door she hesitated. From inside the room she could hear her Aunt Gibson’s voice quite plainly.

      ‘So it is true, then?’

      Ellie could discern the anger in her aunt’s voice, but before she could learn any more her cousin Cecily suddenly appeared on the stairs.

      ‘Ellie, come up quickly. I can’t wait to show you the trimmings I have got for my new hat. Mother and I saw them last week in Miller’s Arcade.’

      Reluctantly, Ellie started to climb the stairs.

      In the parlour Amelia Gibson shook her head as she looked at her youngest sister.

      ‘Lyddy, Mr Pride knew you were not to have another child. He was told that it would be too dangerous. Alfred is most concerned. He has sought the advice of an eminent specialist on your behalf but he confirms what has already been said.’

      ‘Yes, I know,’ Lydia replied wanly, before bursting out in a panic-stricken voice, ‘I am so afraid, Melia, and not just for myself. I have my girls to think about, especially Ellie. If anything were to happen I would want them –’

      ‘Lyddy, please, you must not distress yourself like this,’ Amelia said firmly. ‘You may rest assured that we, your sisters, shall always do what is right and proper for your daughters. Even though you defied and hurt our mother when you went against her to marry Robert Pride, I know she would want and expect us to treat your daughters as our own.’

      ‘He has provided well for us,’ Lydia defended her husband quickly. ‘He has a good business and –’

      ‘He has got you with child again, Lydia,’ her sister interrupted, speaking with unusual bluntness. ‘And he was warned the last time. Had you married a man of our own class such a thing would not have happened. I’m afraid that men of Mr Pride’s class have…appetites that should never be inflicted on a lady!’ She added delicately, ‘Alfred made it quite plain to him that if he wished to indulge in…marital relations he must adopt certain…safeguards.’

      Lydia bowed her head, unable to make any response. How could she possibly tell her sister that she had been the one to urge Robert on?

      A dull smog from the factory chimneys was thickening the air when Ellie and her mother finally left Winckley Square.

      Ellie had noticed a tremendous difference in her mother these last few months. She no longer smiled and sang about the house, but had become critical and cross. Ellie couldn’t remember the last time she had seen her father come into the parlour and pick her mother up off her feet, as he had once frequently done, whirling her round in his arms and planting a kiss on her lips, whilst Lydia mock-scolded him for his boisterousness.

      Yes, there was a very different atmosphere in the Pride household now, and although Ellie, growing quickly to womanhood herself, longed to know if in some way the baby her mother was carrying was responsible for the change in her, she knew better than to ask such an intimate question.

      Ellie wasn’t ignorant of the way in which a child was conceived; their father’s family, for one thing, had a much more vigorous and salty approach to life than her mother’s, especially their Uncle William, the drover for whom Gideon sometimes worked.

      William Pride was the black sheep of the family; a rebel in many ways, who had still managed to do very well by himself materially. And in doing so he also ensured that their father was supplied with the best-quality meat on offer, since it was William who went to the northern markets to buy fat lambs and beasts, as well as poultry in season, driving the animals back from the Lakes and Dales markets to sell to several butchers, including his brother.

      Ellie knew that her mother did not approve of her husband’s brother, and she always tried to discourage her husband from spending any more time than necessary with him when he was in town.

      As they hurried through the smog-soured streets, keeping their scarves across their faces to protect themselves from its evil smell, out of the corner of her eye, Ellie saw a group of young millworkers huddled in a small entry that led into one of the town’s ‘yards’.

      The houses, crammed into these places to accommodate the needs of the millworkers at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, before the mill owners themselves had put up new terraces of cottages to house their workers, had no proper sanitation and were deemed to be the worst of the town’s slums. Even through the thick choking smog, Ellie had to wrinkle her nose against their nauseating smell.

      A man crossed the street in front of Ellie and her mother, causing them to step into the gutter to avoid him as he stood in front of the girls, leering at them. Drunk and unkempt, he made Ellie shudder in distaste. Her mother tugged sharply on her arm, drawing her firmly away. But Ellie already knew that the place they had just passed was one of the town’s