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

nowhere to sleep. She’d end up like Leah, freezing in shop doorways as her baby kicked inside her and all her friends turned their backs on her.

But if she took Mr Pembroke’s deal, she would have a roof over her head, an income, and, best of all, Aoife would be out of Mr Pembroke’s reach.

There was only one thing she could say. She thought of Charles, the way that he had held her and smiled at her, and it was only then that it hurt.

‘I want it in writing,’ she said. ‘Not the parts about the baby, of course – just a signed agreement that you will allow me three hundred pounds a year as long as I … remain unmarried. I’m sure you have a lawyer who could oblige.’

His face twisted, and she had no idea if he was trying to smile or grimace. ‘You’ll have the agreement by this evening.’

She stood up. ‘I’ll take care of the rest.’

Turpentine. The herbs. Pennyroyal. Tansy. A box of ‘Dr Merryweather’s Female Pills’, which rattled as she walked. Eleanor had taken everything she could find, and thrown it all up again behind the apothecary’s shop. Her throat still burned from the turpentine. Now her room smelled of mildew and vomit, and the combination made her feel sick all over again. There was no point taking any more pills. She’d only bring them back up.

The house was quiet. She’d told the others she’d eaten a bad whelk and so far, they believed her. But tomorrow she’d be sick again, and they’d seen girls like her often enough to know the signs.

When she’d arrived back from the apothecary, throat still burning from the turpentine, she’d found a piece of paper slid underneath her bedroom door. It was Mr Pembroke’s signed agreement. She’d crammed it into her case along with Mrs Pembroke’s address book. The silver shoes winked up at her, and in that moment she wanted to tear them into pieces. She knocked on Charles’s door, but when she went inside his room was empty.

She still didn’t know where he was. His things were strewn about his room, Mrs Pembroke’s ring forgotten on the floor. Eleanor remembered what Mr Pembroke had said – that boy ought to see a doctor – and shuddered to think of where he might be now.

She went back to her room and sat on the edge of her bed with her head in her hands, feeling as though all the warmth and colour had been wrung from her. If she and Charles had got away in time, it would not have been perfect. She would have never been a lady, never seen the world, but they would have had each other. But now, she did not even have that. Once again, Mr Pembroke had ripped the future she wanted from her fingers. How much more was he going to take from her? Was her self made up of component parts that could be snatched away or bartered off? Would she ever be whole, and happy?

She had to take Mr Pembroke’s deal. A baby was not something that she could hide. Without any money, she and her baby would be cold, hungry, dirty. There would be nowhere for them but the workhouse, and even there they would be separated if the child was a boy. It’d be her name that was passed around in whispers outside the church, her example mothers would use to warn their daughters. And even if she passed herself off as a respectable young widow, how could she bring Charles’s baby into the world without him beside her? How could she bear to see his eyes, his smile, in a face that was not his own?

Eleanor shivered. She wasn’t sure if she could look after another person who depended on her so completely. She had tried with her mother, all those years before. While Alice Hartley had lain in her bed, coughing up blood, Eleanor had tried to wash the bedsheets, clean the house, cook the dinner. But the laundry copper had burned her fingers and the stick was too heavy; she couldn’t carry enough buckets of water to mop the floor; she couldn’t light the kitchen range properly and had to stand on a chair to reach the stove. At first Eleanor cried and asked her neighbours for help, but she stopped when no one came.

Panic flooded her body at the thought of the burden, the weight.

She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to put herself through that again. She’d wear herself down to nothing if she tried. At least if she took Mr Pembroke’s deal, she could start again, unencumbered. No one need ever know what she’d done or who she’d been.

She was going to make a wish.

The black-eyed woman had been at the back of her mind all day, like a shape moving below the surface of the water. Her empty eyes glittered in every puddle, in every half-glimpsed reflection. When she called her, Eleanor knew that she would be smiling.

It was dark outside. The snows had melted in a fine hiss of rain. It oozed down her window pane like tears. Later, she would cry again, but now there was no time.

‘Hello? Are you there?’

The voice, when it spoke, came from somewhere over her shoulder. Eleanor turned, and the black-eyed woman was standing by the head of her bed.

‘I am always here, dearest.’

‘I would like to make a wish.’

The black-eyed woman’s smile widened. ‘I take it you’ve changed your mind about our arrangement?’

Eleanor nodded. Her knuckles had gone white. When she took her hands away from her stomach, the fabric of her dress had left ridges on the palms of her hands.

The woman’s eyes shone like oil. ‘I know what you want me to do, but I cannot do it unless you make the wish.’

A few months ago Eleanor had been sure she would never call on the black-eyed woman again, but now all her firmness had melted away. People