Never Look Back by Lesley Pearse Page B

like a small child. That night was one of the most memorable in their time together.
    He pulled himself out of that reverie. It didn’t do to think too deeply about Nell, it only saddened him to remember what came in later years. And how lonely he felt now.
    ‘So you’re ’appy there?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes, I’m happy.’ She smiled because she’d remembered to sound the ‘h’, and her eyes shone. ‘But I do miss you and the boys.’
    ‘Don’t waste your time thinking about us,’ he said brusquely. ‘We’re doing fine without you.’
    Her face fell at this and Lucas felt ashamed. Yet if he was to tell her the truth – that the boys had been out scavenging every day, that their room hadn’t been swept or a fire lit since the day she left – she’d only be distressed. Giving them a beating was pointless, they were looking for an excuse to slip off to one of the rookeries where they could get an apprenticeship in thieving and villainy.
    ‘Luke’s bin better since you went,’ he lied. ‘Reckon ‘e thinks ’e’s all grown up now. But tell me about this book you’ve bin reading.’
    Matilda sensed he was hiding the truth and she wanted to tell him that Charles Dickens wrote about the poor like them, and that he fully understood the danger small boys could fall into in London. But to do so would only make him unhappy knowing she’d guessed the truth, and anyway her father knew those perils even better than she did, so instead she made him laugh with a description of Mr Bumble, the beadle.
    ‘Maybe I could bring the book with me one day and read some of it to you,’ she said. Her father could read a few simple words and sign his own name, but that was the extent of his schooling.
    ‘That’d be grand,’ he said, his eyes sparkling. ‘But it’s time you went now, you’ve got a long walk and I’ve got to get back to the river.’
    He walked part of the way with her, she looked so pretty he was afraid for her walking the streets alone.
    ‘Give Luke and George my love,’ she said as they parted just before Camden Town. ‘Could you get ’em to come an’ all next week?’
    ‘I’ll try,’ he replied, without much conviction. ‘Now, go straight back. No loitering.’
    She kissed him and clung to him for a moment, breathing in that familiar and comforting smell she’d grown up with. She might find living in the parsonage more pleasant than Finders Court, it was good to feel she’d taken a step up the ladder, but if her father asked her to come back home because he needed her, she knew she wouldn’t hesitate.
    ‘I love you, Father,’ she whispered. She had never said that to him before, but perhaps she had to leave him to see it for herself.
    ‘I love you too, Matty,’ he whispered back. ‘And I’m so very proud of you an’ all. Now, skip off ’ome and keep yer nose clean, along wif that silver they gets you to polish. Who knows, you might end up owning some of yer own one day’
    It was on a sultry night in August five months after Matilda started work at the parsonage that she heard a frenzied shriek from Lily. Giles had been out all evening, so Matilda and Lily had said their customary prayers at half past nine alone, and then Matilda had come up to bed, leaving the older woman reading in the parlour.
    Imagining that someone had broken into the house and wasnow hurting her mistress, Matilda leaped out of bed and rushed out on to the landing. But on hearing Giles’s deep voice she faltered at the top of the stairs, shocked to think they could fight like her old neighbours.
    There was no fresh air anywhere. All the upstairs windows were wide open, but no cooling breeze was coming in, only bad smells from the drains. It was almost like being back in Finders Court except there was no noise outside.
    It hadn’t rained for over four weeks, and each day it had grown steadily hotter. The milk had to be boiled so it wouldn’t go bad, butter turned to oil and Lily was so suspicious of fish and