The Shadow in the Glass by JJA Harwood (any book recommendations txt) 📕

tried last spring. She said Mrs Fielding wouldn’t do her a reference unless the master said so and the lady wouldn’t take her on without a character. How’d I get another place without that?’

Eleanor passed a shaking hand over her face. Another way out closed off.

‘I didn’t even like Lizzie!’ Aoife wailed. ‘She was a – but I can’t even say it, now, because you’re not to speak ill of the dead!’

Eleanor bit her lip. Lizzie’s last taunts still rang in her head. Her grin had flickered in the candlelight as she’d spoken those words. Knowing what she’d done, what she was going to do, Eleanor was not sorry that Lizzie was dead.

But would she be sorry if she had killed her?

Eleanor pushed the thought away at once. Of course she hadn’t killed Lizzie with a wish. It was stupid to think so. Besides, if that was what had happened then surely she would have known. The shoes had appeared overnight, as if by magic. If Lizzie had been killed by magic, then there should’ve been something magical about her death, and even the police thought it ordinary. Lizzie would have dropped dead the moment Eleanor spoke the words aloud, or vanished in a puff of smoke. That was how magic worked in stories.

Eleanor put an arm around Aoife and pulled her head against her shoulder. She stared into the covered mirror and saw her and Aoife’s reflections, hazy behind black gauze – and, for a moment, a shape that might have been something else entirely. But then Eleanor blinked, and it was gone.

A feather of dirty cloud was spreading across the sky, swelling and billowing as it gained momentum. The heat off the cobblestones was pressed back down as the cloud rose, making horses irritable and giving Eleanor a dull, whining headache.

Eleanor waded through the crowds scurrying for cover, weighed down with a heavy leg of mutton in her basket and tugging her skirts away from horses’ hooves. She ducked to avoid flapping canvas as a costermonger put up a shade.

Granborough House loomed ahead of her, already visible where Marylebone faded into Mayfair. The heavy clouds gathered directly above it, as though they had poured straight out of the chimneys like ink spilling from a bottle. The attic windows looked like eyes full of tears.

Eleanor considered not going back. She could sell the contents of her basket to whoever would take them, take the money and disappear into the crowd. What did she have in Granborough House that she cared for? Only memories – and Aoife, of course. With Leah gone and Daisy confined to the kitchen, Mr Pembroke would move on to Aoife, if Eleanor left. She couldn’t let that happen.

Besides, she thought, as she bypassed a crossing-sweeper with a weeping sore leering at her, if she did leave, where would she go? If there was a safe place for young girls in London, she did not know where it was. There were all sorts of stories. Respectable country girls would find an advertisement for a clean, well-kept and entirely proper boarding house only to walk into a bordello, and they would not be allowed to leave. Finding a safe place to live would not be a matter of knocking on a clean and shiny door and asking nicely. And even if she did find somewhere to lay her head, who would let her in with no references to vouch for her character and no money to pay the rent?

Rain spattered against Eleanor’s cheek, made grey by the soot and smoke of many chimneys. Soon, the rain was pelting against the cobblestones, rattling like pennies on the rooftops, and the street was engulfed in a mess of noise as the crowds fled from the downpour. A costermonger selling strawberry ices threw himself over his machine, shielding his wares with his stomach. Flower-sellers shrieked and ran for cover, holding their trays over their heads. A piper shoved his instrument inside his jacket and ran to a nearby church, splashing the legs of a wedding party crowded under the lychgate. The only thing that seemed to be happy was a brown butcher’s dog, rolling around in the rain.

Of course, now Eleanor could rely on the wishes.

But should she? She’d lose her soul if she made them all. And besides, there was so much about the arrangement that did not seem right. The black-eyed woman’s smile had been perfectly serene, her voice oddly familiar, but those eyes … Eleanor shuddered.

And now, Lizzie was dead. Eleanor had made a wish and Lizzie had died.

But surely, Eleanor told herself, that had to be coincidence. Her first wish had been so lovely – those beautiful shoes appearing just before the sunrise, like a gift from a fairy tale. Her second wish – if that had been how it had really come true – hadn’t felt like that at all. Perhaps the black-eyed woman had had something else planned, but Lizzie had been killed before she could carry it out.

Eleanor felt herself wilting. It sounded like an excuse, even in her own head.

She headed back to Granborough House, water dripping into her collar despite her hat. The street was the colour of churned-up mud and old bird droppings. The rain bounced up from in between the cobblestones, each drop as filthy as a much-handled coin. There was so much muddy water in the street that the crossing-sweepers looked like they were trying to brush aside a river. Eleanor hurried along the pavement and pulled her shawl over her head. A hansom splashed past and she darted away from it, knocking into an old woman waiting by a hot-potato cart. The woman swore at her, but Eleanor was already gone. A street-seller called to her, holding out a cup of coffee. A damp beggar held out his hand to Eleanor, his one eye pleading. A man with a tray of ‘Heathful Tonics’ around his neck tried to grab her arm. There was a miserable organ grinder