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

ate, snatching the hot potatoes with her bare fingers, and sucked every last drop of jelly from under her fingernails. Eleanor had to look away. Leah had never used to eat like this.

‘Have you been keeping well?’ Eleanor asked, when Leah had finished.

Leah bristled. ‘Well enough, thank you. I’ve been to my brother’s.’

‘And how is he?’

Leah’s face grew dark. ‘I didn’t stop to find out.’

As she spoke, Eleanor noticed a faint smell coming from Leah’s drying skirts. It was damp and chilly, with something of the sewer in it. Where Leah had been sleeping?

‘Have another slice of pie,’ said Mrs Banbury. ‘How’s the baby treating you?’

Leah put a hand to her stomach. ‘It fidgets. Is that normal?’

‘My mam always says so,’ said Aoife, her eyes brimming with tears.

Eleanor put a hand on Leah’s knee. Her dress was damp and sticky. ‘Not that it isn’t lovely to see you, Leah – we’ve all been terribly worried – but why have you come here?’

Leah set aside her plate. ‘I want to see him upstairs. It’s his child. He ought to do something for it.’

Aoife put her hands over her mouth; Daisy stopped halfway through scrubbing a plate. Mrs Banbury beckoned Aoife over.

‘Fetch Lizzie’s old things. Leah can have them if she wants.’

Aoife scuttled upstairs. Leah got up, massaging the small of her back. ‘Won’t Lizzie mind? Where is she?’

Silence swelled through the room. The sloshing water in the sink seemed to crash through the quiet like waves. Daisy yanked her hands out of the water, face ashen, and Eleanor remembered the cold, sickly smell drifting out of the water trough.

‘Lizzie’s dead,’ Eleanor said.

The door opened. Mrs Fielding came in, closely followed by Aoife, clutching a moth-eaten carpetbag. Mrs Fielding’s eyes narrowed when she saw Leah.

‘Please—’ Leah began.

‘I made your position clear,’ said Mrs Fielding.

‘Please, I only want—’

Mrs Fielding turned to Aoife. ‘Fetch the constable.’

Eleanor ran upstairs for her shawl. By the time she was in the kitchen again, Leah was already shuffling down the street, bent-backed and weeping. Eleanor burst through the back door and ran after her, snatching up the carpetbag as she went.

Eleanor shoved the shawl and the bag into Leah’s hands. ‘Here.’ Then, before Leah could speak, she ran back towards the house.

October sent a chill creeping through the city. Damp oozed through the windows. Mould stretched its crawling fingers through the house and mottled everything black and green. In unused rooms, Eleanor could see her own breath misting in the air, like a housebound cloud. Her garret was so cold that she awoke sore from shivering. In the kitchen, they huddled beside the range like misers bent over jewels.

When Mrs Pembroke was alive, this would never have happened. She ordered her coal in the summer, when prices were cheaper. She had been ready when winter slid its fingers through the crack under the door. She commanded the maids to stoke up the fires and sent them scurrying across the house, armed with hot water and carbolic soap. But now Mrs Fielding had to beg the money from Mr Pembroke, who begrudged every penny that was not spent on brandy or the fees for his club. The house grew stiller and darker every day. The air tasted flat; it could have been abandoned already.

Mrs Fielding tried to keep the house in order. She had them all up before dawn, scrubbing, dusting and polishing, and still expected them to keep their hair tidy and their uniforms spotless. Hands raw, arms aching, Eleanor went to bed with polish under her fingernails and the biting smell of carbolic lodged in the back of her throat. But when the library bell rang, Eleanor could throw down her brushes, her rags, and her dusters, and retreat into a soft, warm room.

Charles insisted on having a fire. The lamps were always lit. The only sounds were the crackling of burning coals, the scratching of Eleanor’s pen and Charles’s low voice. The room shone. Anything seemed possible there. She’d even told Charles about Leah, and when he’d seen her trembling hands and heard the catch in her voice, he had promised to find her. Eleanor wasn’t going to let anyone take that away from her.

The others would have tried, but none of them could read. Once, she’d gone downstairs and seen Aoife hunched over the Illustrated London News, tracing the words with a finger and frowning. Daisy had laughed when she’d seen her, and leant over to rub the crease between her brows.

‘That’ll leave a mark,’ she said.

Aoife swatted her hands away. ‘Your hands smell like onions.’

‘You don’t mind,’ Daisy said, smiling.

Daisy saw Eleanor and jerked her hands away. Aoife scrambled for the newspaper and shoved it into a bucket, avoiding Eleanor’s eyes.

‘Eleanor! Your hands!’

Eleanor flinched and almost knocked over the inkwell. Charles had been standing behind her and he’d almost yelled in her ear. She blushed and hid her hands in her lap.

‘It’s nothing.’

Her hands were red, covered in a web of fine cuts and flaking skin. Knotted knuckles and corded veins only made it worse. They looked like boiled lobsters – damp, crustaceous creatures dredged up from the ocean floor.

‘Will you let me see?’

‘It’s nothing to trouble yourself over.’

‘Please?’

She hesitated, then offered him her hand. Shame crawled under her skin. Let him see she was no real lady in all the veiny detail. The trails of his touch burned.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘Sometimes. Three years of housework leaves a mark.’

Charles’s face fell. ‘I should have been here. Father never would have dared to put you into service if I hadn’t been away.’

It was something she’d wondered at, in the dark of night, for years. She hesitated. ‘Why didn’t you come back, Charles?’

He gave her a sad smile. ‘Father and I have never been easy. Without Mother …’

She squeezed his hand. ‘Of course. Forgive me, I wasn’t thinking.’

‘Well,’ said Charles, glancing at the clock, ‘I must beg your permission to leave. I have a few business matters to attend to in town.’

Eleanor felt a pang of regret.