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let it out of her sight if she did. She was beginning to feel as if she had been more than taken advantage of – she had been thoroughly duped. It was a feeling she definitely did not care for.
    ‘Your mummy, where is she?’
    Nell shook her head and, she couldn’t help it, the tears started to flow. ‘Mummy gone,’ she snivelled. ‘The chair. Hurt.’ She could barely speak through her sobs. ‘Fire. Hot.’
    The matron tutted crossly. For goodness sake, she didn’t have time to figure out all this nonsense; she had a child to bathe and dress, and, more importantly, forms to fill in and details to enter into ledgers. She pinned the brooch to her apron bib, and patted it. It was surprisingly lovely. Feminine. Delicate.
    Clara Sully had never owned a piece of jewellery before. But now that she did, it made her lips twitch into what was almost a smile of pleasure.
    Why should only those bold women with powdered cheeks and rouged lips have nice things? Things that men gave them as gifts for their unspeakable – she shuddered at the thought – attentions. Women that they called
pretty
, something they had never called her. But what did she care?
    Clara patted the brooch again, and told herself that by wearing it she was striking a blow against all those men who chose to ignore women like her – women who didn’t have bouncing blonde curls, or big bold eyes, and who had no interest in being drawn in by men’s wicked ways. She was a proud and brave pioneer against such evil.
    Yes, that’s what she was, no matter that the look on the child’s face said otherwise. She was a pioneer.

October
1927

Chapter 5
    Matron Clara Sully stood in the doorway of her office peering round Mr Thanet, the senior governor, as if she was hiding from someone she was secretly spying on – which she thought she was. Both she and Mr Thanet were watching Nell. Tall, grown-up, beautiful Nell. She was smiling sweetly as she squatted down in front of a little boy, fully aware that the matron was there.
    Nell was whispering to the boy, so quietly that Matron Sully couldn’t hear what she was saying, but the matron knew it would be something that would have got the girl into trouble if she had been able to hear her words. She thought she was so clever, sweedling up to Mr Thanet –
can I do this for you, Mr Thanet? Can I do that? Is that quick enough for you, sir?
– all the while acting as if butter wouldn’t melt in her devious mouth. But she couldn’t fool Matron Sully, she was always one up on her, and could always see through her and her crafty ways. She knew what the girl was up to. She wanted to steal her job.
    ‘There you are, Sam,’ Nell said softly. ‘You do it like that and you won’t keep tripping over them. I thought you were going to come a rightcropper when you were getting down from the breakfast table just now.’
    She leaned closer. ‘And keep them neat in a double bow like that and you won’t keep annoying Matron, and she won’t keep getting so cross with you. Now wipe the dripping off your chin, stand up straight, and get yourself off to the schoolroom, before you get yourself another caning for being late.’
    The little boy threw his arms around Nell’s neck and kissed her, hugging her to him.
    Nell ruffled his hair as she looked into his serious little face. It saddened her when the younger children, or the less clever older ones got into trouble with Matron, she could be so spiteful to them. If she could have, she would have folded them all in her arms and cared for every one of them just like the lady she remembered from long ago had cared for her. But Nell knew she couldn’t take the blame for everything in her efforts to protect them from Matron’s temper. Unfortunately for Sam, tripping over right in front of Matron wasn’t one of the things for which she could claim responsibility.
    ‘What a delightful girl Nell has grown up to be,’ Walter Thanet said, smiling down at the scene before him. ‘Always