Sublime

had

Full of kindliness and sympathy, St Cyres persuaded June to give up her flat in town and to come with her small boy to live at Manor Thatch. June had acquiesced at first. She was lonely and frightened and in debt. June St Cyres was one of those young women who can never live within their incomes, but she was shrewd enough to know that she could liv

five unfortunate souls who had died in gaol: Ann Foster, Sarah Osborne, Lydia Dustin, Roger Toothaker, and Mercy Good, who was born in prison and died before her mother was hanged.

Annie, only stabbed.

She then taught English at Fakenham Grammar School for five happy years, where she also thoroughly enjoyed producing plays. Through a bitter twist of fate, in 1978 she was diagnosed with and very quickly died of liver cancer.

‘You’re on another planet!’ Mrs Baker would cry as she turned off the gas or saved the bath from overflowing. ‘God only knows what you did before I came.’ ‘Well,’ Astrid would say, ‘I had Charlie, and before Charlie I lived in squalor.’

Henrietta died the day they sent Elsie away, that losing her was worse than anything else that happened to her. Now, nearly a year later, Henrietta still had Day or a cousin take her from Turner Station to Crownsville once a week to sit with Elsie, who’d cry and cling to her as they played with each other’s hair.