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

The matron led them to a small room with bare floorboards and whitewashed walls. In front of them was another long, dirty window, looking onto the women’s yard. To Eleanor’s right, the matron was fumbling with her keys and standing by a small door. On her left was a much larger door, secured by bolts at the top and bottom, leading to the men’s block. Eleanor could not see the graves, and was not sure if she wanted to.

The matron unlocked the door. Eleanor flinched at the sound.

‘Wait a moment,’ the matron said, and went inside. Eleanor heard yelling – ‘All right, into the yard, the lot of you!’ – before the door closed.

Eleanor clutched Charles’s arm tighter. He gave her hand a squeeze.

The matron came back when the shuffling had stopped on the other side of the door. ‘Just through here, sir. Miss.’

She held open the door. Eleanor walked into a larger room – still barren, still cold. One framed sampler hung on the wall, and standing in the middle of the room was a young woman with dark hair and naked hope scrawled across her face.

Leah. She was alive. She was safe. After all this time, Eleanor had found her.

Leah was thin, but not as thin as she had been. There were new lines on her face and a permanent droop to her shoulders. But it was Leah, just older and sharper. Eleanor felt the weight of all her new clothes and shame curled itself around her.

‘Little Nell,’ said Leah, softly, ‘look at you.’

The familiar nickname brought a lump to Eleanor’s throat. ‘Leah. You look …’ The word ‘well’ shrivelled on Eleanor’s tongue. ‘How are you?’

Leah glanced at the matron, who was carefully saying nothing. ‘Oh, very well, thank you.’

‘And your boy?’

Leah’s face softened. ‘Growing so fast I can scarcely credit it. Of course,’ she said, not looking at the matron, ‘that’s to be expected, now he’s getting decent food.’

A rat scuttled across the room. The matron stamped her foot and it darted away. Eleanor flinched; so did Leah. She could feel the bolted door in the corridor behind her, like a hand on her shoulder.

‘Leah,’ Eleanor blurted out, ‘how would you like to come and live with me?’

‘Are you …’

‘Bring Josiah. I’ve a house in Peckham with a garden. I shall be married soon, and the house will be yours if you want it.’

The matron coughed. ‘Say thank you to the lady, Wallace.’

Leah had put a hand to her mouth. Her eyes were shiny with tears. ‘D’you mean it?’

Eleanor took Leah’s hands. They were stained, the nails split; they must have her picking coir, like a prisoner. Eleanor held them tight and thought of all the things that Leah must have gone through, in all the time it had taken Eleanor to find her.

Leah would never have to think of such things again. Eleanor could give her a home, an income, a profession, if she wanted. Mr Pembroke had taken Leah’s future from her – Eleanor could give it back. How could she ever regret selling her soul, when it had given her the power to do this?

‘Of course I mean it,’ Eleanor said.

Leah was crying. ‘Bless you,’ she kept saying, ‘bless you, bless you.’

Charles took her arm. ‘Let me take care of the paperwork, dear,’ he murmured. ‘Why don’t you go and wait in the cab?’

Eleanor nodded. Before she left the room she hesitated, wondering whether to ask the matron where the paupers were buried. But there would be no point – without a headstone she wouldn’t know if, when she stood at the graveside, it was really her parents rotting beneath her feet. Better to leave them behind, as she had left everything else.

Eleanor stumbled into the cab, shaken. She was out. Warm sunshine, birdsong, the smell of baking apples – each one was a sharp and shining thing. Heat, music, scent, snorting horses, stray cats, church bells ringing in the distance: she wanted to fold them all up inside a handkerchief and clutch it to her chest.

But she had done it. She had brought Leah home.

Bessie had objected to the idea of a workhouse girl coming to live with them. They were, she’d said, respectable people; why invite trouble into their home? The neighbours would talk, the child would cry at all hours of the night and Leah would tell all the criminal types she knew about the foolish little rich girl and her unguarded house.

Eleanor dismissed Bessie the next morning. Perhaps Eleanor was foolish, but Bessie should have remembered that she was not a little girl.

Bessie also should have remembered to ask for a written reference, but Eleanor wasn’t going to tell her that. What did it matter if Bessie couldn’t get another position? She hadn’t been a very good maid.

Eleanor went upstairs and made up the empty bed, just this once. There was a chest of drawers beside it; the bottom one would do for the baby. Then Eleanor went downstairs to make tea. It took longer than she’d thought and came out far too weak. She’d lost her touch. All those weeks remembering to be ladylike had clearly paid off. It wasn’t just her hands that had changed. Suddenly it seemed that all the colour and strength had been leached out of her until she was as soft and white as her fingers. Pretty. Pliable.

What else had she lost? When was the last time she’d read a book – a good book, one that wasn’t filled with dastardly counts and young women dying prettily in white dresses? Once, Eleanor had coiled words around her like vines. She’d felt the strength of them as if they’d had their roots in earth. Now they were more like bracelets: shiny, shallow things to be slipped on and off as she pleased. Until now, she hadn’t noticed how they’d changed. What else was she missing?

Had she really done the right thing?

She dropped a