of conditions Connie now did. Her grimy, darned clothes were shabbier even than those worn by her aunt’s scullery maid.
She touched her concave belly, and turned her face into the grimy pillow to weep.
Three doors away, Connie’s new neighbours were exploring their new home.
‘Mother, you can’t stay here,’ Harry Lawson protested, as he looked around the shabby parlour.
‘Harry, we’ll be fine,’ Elsie Lawson tried to reassure her son, but in reality she was as appalled by her surroundings as he was. Her elder daughter was yet to join them, so Elsie told Harry brightly, ‘When Mavis gets here we’ll set to and clean it up.’
It was only just a month since she had lost her husband. Thieves had broken into his grocery shop and bludgeoned him to death.
Elsie was still in shock. The shop had been a rented property, as had the pretty house they had lived in, and her husband had only left her a small amount of money. Of her three children, only one was working, and Harry’s job as a junior schoolteacher at Hutton Grammar School paid him only a pittance.
She had been told that property was much cheaper to rent down in this part of the city, and naively she had not fully understood why!
‘You can’t stay here, Mother,’ Harry was repeating. ‘I’ll leave Hutton when my contract finishes at the end of next term, and I’ll look for another teaching job.’
‘You will do no such thing, Harry Lawson,’ Elsie stopped him angrily. ‘What do you think your poor father would say if he could hear you saying that? He was that proud of you, Harry. Getting a scholarship and all! And there’s no better public school hereabouts than Hutton. You said when they took you on, that you were lucky and what an honour it was to be chosen to teach there. I know they don’t pay you much now, but when one of the older teachers retires, they’re bound to give you a promotion,’ she finished proudly.
Harry shook his head. Everything she had said was true, but he couldn’t leave his mother and sisters to live here.
‘This place will be all right for now,’ Elsie assured him again, with a cheerfulness she was far from feeling. ‘Once I’ve given it a good clean and got some of our own things in, it will look a lot better – you wait and see.’
Harry smiled. He knew how proud both his parents were of him. But he had seen the pretty young girl crossing the yard earlier, her face pinched with cold and hunger, her dress shabby and faded. His heart had gone out to her. There was no way he wanted to see his own sisters ending up like that. He had been granted some special leave because of his father’s death, and he decided he would spend that time making enquiries to see if he could get a teaching post with a less prestigious school. He needed to find somewhere where he could live out, and not in, as he had to at Hutton, and to try to get some extra part-time work to help with the family finances.
‘Titanic Sinks – Hundreds Feared Dead!’
Gideon’s stomach lurched with disbelief as he stared at the headlines in his morning paper.
He picked it up and scanned the front page article. It was true! The liner its owners had claimed was unsinkable, had sunk!
That news, in itself, would have been shocking enough, without the fact that Connie had been on board it.
Ellie was upstairs in the nursery, and he had a mad impulse to throw the papers on the fire before she could see them.
He heard her footsteps crossing the hall and she came into the room, her eyes bright with happiness and love; her mouth curved into a delighted smile.
‘Gideon, you’ll never guess what! Joshua has just smiled at me! Nurse says he is still too young, but I know that he did. Oh, I wish you could have seen –’ Abruptly she stopped speaking as she saw the look on his face. ‘What. What is it?’
He went to her and gently led her to a chair, holding both her hands as he told her quietly, ‘There is bad news, Ellie. The Titanic has sunk with a terrible loss of life.’ He kept hold of her hands, and watched her as she struggled to assimilate what he had said.
‘The Titanic … But no! That can’t be true! She’s unsinkable! It was in the papers! She cannot have sunk … Connie is on board her!’ Ellie protested pathetically, before catching her breath and denying frantically, ‘No, Gideon! No! No!’ Shocked tears streaming down her face, Ellie turned to him. ‘There will be survivors though, surely?’ she begged.
Gideon felt the pity grip his throat. Connie had been a steerage passenger, but he couldn’t bring himself to remind Ellie of this, and take her hope away from her. But something in his expression must have betrayed him because suddenly she demanded, ‘You think that she’s dead, don’t you?
Oh, Gideon! This is all my fault! I should have done more for her, Gideon. If I had she would never …’
Gideon was not going to allow that!
‘Ellie, you have nothing to blame yourself for,’ he assured her immediately. ‘Connie was always headstrong and wilful, and you did your best for her.’
‘The family will have to be told,’ Ellie whispered, as though she hadn’t heard him.
‘I shall do everything that is necessary,’ Gideon assured her.
‘She might have survived. There will be survivors, won’t there, Gideon?’ Ellie repeated helplessly. ‘Such a new modern liner, there would have been lifeboats and …’
Gideon said nothing. According to the papers there had not been enough lifeboats to hold all the passengers, and those travelling steerage, like Connie, would have had the least chance of surviving.
As tears filled Ellie’s eyes, Gideon took her in his arms. ‘I’ll get young John round here, aye, and send a message to your father as well. And your ma’s family – the posh lot – will have to be told, I suppose.’
Ellie couldn’t speak. How could it be possible that Connie could be dead, drowned? Wilful, naughty, reckless Connie. Connie, her little sister.
‘Well, what I want to know is, what on earth Connie was doing on the Titanic in the first place?’
Amelia Gibson’s voice was sour-apple sharp as she looked accusingly at Ellie. Gideon had informed Ellie’s mother’s family, the Barclay sisters, of the news via Ellie’s aunt, Amelia Gibson, who was also their neighbour.
Ellie shook her head and looked at Gideon. Connie had not been on the list of survivors posted by the White Star Shipping Line and published in the national papers, and nor had Kieron Connolly.
‘Well, if you want my opinion Ellie, it’s probably all for the best,’ Amelia Gibson was continuing virtuously.
‘All for the best!’ Ellie’s whole body trembled as she stopped her. ‘Aunt, Connie is probably dead. How can that be for the best!’ Tears welled in Ellie’s eyes.
Immediately Amelia bristled and fixed Ellie with an angry glare.
‘I shouldn’t have thought it was necessary to explain my words to you. I refuse to sully my lips by discussing any of your sister’s disgraceful behaviour. She has brought shame on herself and shame on our
