‘That was why she went to Kingsfield. Morally inadequate, they called it. Pregnant and unmarried so they locked her up.’
‘Oh God. But your parents…’
‘Signed the forms. There was little hesitation. There were many girls like Nora. Young girls. She was only sixteen, little more than a child herself. She had the baby, a little girl, taken from her at birth, taken to be adopted.’
Agnes’ niece.
‘You never saw the baby?’
‘Oh, no. I visited Nora secretly. My mother thought it best to stay away.’
‘So Nora stayed there after she’d had the baby?’
‘Yes. I don’t think they ever said exactly how long she was expected to be there. It was a punishment, you see, rather than treatment. She’d broken the rules. There was no compassion.’ She tore a little strip off the edge of her paper sheet and began to roll it into a cylinder in her fingers. ‘Nora had been seduced by an older man, a business connection of my father’s. He continued to do well.’
‘So, they didn’t find him guilty of moral inadequacy.’
‘Oh, no,’ she said ruefully. ‘It was cold, very cold, the last time I visited her. There was no snow but one of those easterly winds that cuts right through you. I’d brought her cakes and a ribbon. It was a harsh regime. Most of the girls worked in the laundry, Nora worked in the kitchens.’
Her hand stole to the brooch on her lapel, kneaded at it through the paper, then returned to work at the frills of paper on her lap.
‘I arrived just after lunch. They’d finished clearing up. Someone suggested I try the dormitory. She had a bed by the window – huge great windows they had, covered in bars. If she wasn’t there I’d put the cakes under her pillow and hope no one stole them. It was quiet up there. The place was deserted.’ She cleared her throat.
‘Nora was there. She was hanging from the curtain rail. She’d torn her apron into strips and her dress. She just had her shift on. A thin cotton shift. I remember thinking she must be so cold up there, with her poor bare arms, so cold.’
I shivered. I thought of all the mother’s daughters. Nora, whose mother had agreed to her incarceration; Nora’s girl child, who would never know the circumstances of her birth; Olive, who had died in infancy and who Lily had called for in her last waking moments; Tina, whose death had been sudden and brutal. And now in the depth of the night there’d be mothers bearing daughters and daughters mourning mothers, and those railing at each other’s shortcomings, and I wanted to be home and warm with my own daughter close by while we still had the chance.