Leah Fleming - The Girl From World’s End

She sipped her hot water, pretending it was cocoa laced with the top of the milk. Mam and Dad would have loved this house but they weren’t here now. They were gone and she was on her own again. If someone didn’t come soon she would starve. How quickly night-time fears flee when the sun shines, but she sat like Cinderella at the hearth, too weak now to move.

When would they come?

Adey took one look at the sky and knew school would be out early. They must send a cart to see the child got back safely. Country kiddies took shelter in bad weather. They knew to lie low until it was safe, but Mirren was different and secretive these days and she might not do the right thing. Adey sent Joe to collect her just in case.

Now they were used to having her around the place, grown accustomed to her noisy chatter and questions. Questions. She was a bright one and her piano playing was coming on. All she lacked was practice and concentration, but she was little Miss Head-in-a-Book. It would be nice if she got to the girls’ secondary school like her mam. Her coming had brought life back to the place and no one could say she didn’t help out…

Then Joe blew in from the doorway, covered in snow.

‘You’re back, praise the Lord. Thanks for getting her, Joe. Where’s her ladyship?’ Adey searched for the child behind him.

‘She wasn’t there, Mother. Burrows said summat about her going home early and that’s not all. I had a word with Lizzie Halstead at the door. Mirren’s hardly been in school at all…’ he muttered.

‘The little minx, wait till I get my hands on her. What’s going on?’ Adey was all worked up with worry and fury.

Carrie was lurking at the stove and she turned pink. ‘Perhaps I should’ve said something earlier, Mrs Yewell, but our Emmot says that Mirren hates school and got the cane for fighting. They’ve been calling her names and Burrows makes her go in the baby class so she’s been off sick.’

‘Now you tell us!’ snapped Adey. ‘How long has this been going on? Oh, my giddy aunt, she’s out in that snow. Send for Tom. We’ll have to get up a search party.’ She felt the fear and panic rising and went for her coat.

‘Hang on, Mother. What good’ll that do in this wild darkness?’ came Joe’s predictable reply. ‘She could be anywhere by now. She’s a sensible lass even if she’s stubborn with it. She’ll have found cover. Tom and the village boys will look for her in the morning.’

‘We can’t wait that long. She’ll catch her death,’ Adey was shouting back. ‘Wait till I see her, scaring us half to death. You’ll have to take the strap to her and teach her a lesson.’

‘Wait on, Adey. Lass’s in enough trouble as it is, gadding off into the hills. She doesn’t know the lay of the land and not the size of tuppence ha’penny. We should have kept a closer eye on her ourselves. We used to be able to sniff out trouble with our lads but we’ve got out of the habit, and she’s a deep one, at that.’

‘You could take the dogs out with a storm lantern,’ Adey pleaded.

‘Don’t be daft. And have two of us lost in the snow? We’ll do the job proper with a gang stretched over the moor. Mind you, she’s a right devil running off from the schoolmaster. I thought only lads did that,’ said Joe, scratching his head.

‘We’ve got to do something,’ screamed Adey, pacing up and down the kitchen, clattering her pans.

Carrie started to cry. ‘I’m not a tale teller, as you know, but I reckon Burrows had made her life a right misery. Emmot says she’s top of the class but she has to sit at the back and shut up or teach the dunces to do their letters. That’s not right, is it?’

‘Poor lass has had a right miserable time but never thought to tell us,’ said Joe, slurping his tea in a way that always got on Adey’s nerves.

‘We didn’t bring her all this way to lose her in the snow,’ Adey sighed. ‘Happen we should never have brought her here in the first place. It’s not like living in a town. She never said a word…’

What if Mirren was already lost? What sort of Christmas would they have in mourning? How would she ever forgive herself? The girl’d been taking her bullying in silence and that showed courage, and to put up with Burrows in the state he was in nowadays. He ought to be reported. Were they such ogres that she couldn’t tell them her troubles?

If she came out of this alive, they’d have to think things afresh, perhaps put her in a private school, but where would they find the cash for that?

‘Dear Lord, keep the child safe for one more day, temper the wind to the shorn lamb,’ Joe prayed, and they bowed their heads in the kitchen. ‘Show us the way…’

Outside the wind roared and the blizzard raged but no one got a wink of sleep that night. They were helpless in the face of the storm. It was out of their hands now.

The fire was still crackling with more broken-off laths but Mirren was now weak with hunger and fear. Why didn’t they come? Would they ever find her? Perhaps they had given her up for lost?

Outside the door a cruel silvery world shimmered with icicles cascading down from the roof ends but she was too tired to wonder at the beauty of it all. She wanted to be home with Gran in Cragside kitchen, back with Carrie making faces, back sneaking titbits to Jet under the table.

It was melting, though. There were drips plopping from the hole in the roof, but no other sound. Then she heard the faint bark of dogs in the distance. Her heart thumped with relief. Someone was out there searching for her.

‘I’m here, over here!’ she squeaked, but her voice was too quiet. She couldn’t open the door for the weight of snow and she was desperate. What would the Scouts do now?

Uncle George’s book had served her well so far. There was a chapter on camping and sending signals, but she’d skipped that bit. If she was high up perhaps they would see her smoke.

Mirren piled on more laths. The only thing to hand was her new winter coat and she was in enough trouble as it was, so she grabbed a smelly sack and tried wafting it over the flames but it caught alight and she had to throw it onto the fire. Perhaps the blue smoke might be visible.

She sat down, exhausted and tearful. Come on old house, she prayed, help me one more time and I promise, on my blue temperance badge, I’ll pay you back.

There was always the hope that the kindred spirits who had once lived here would come to her rescue. She opened the one working shutter and yelled until she was puce and dizzy.

Then a tall boy in a peaked tweed cap, carrying a proddy stick, climbed over a drift and waved.

‘She’s here! Over here! Now then, young Miriam, let’s be having you,’ smiled a pair of dark brown eyes. She’d never seen him before in the village. He was about fourteen.

‘Who are you?’

‘Jack Sowerby, from The Fleece. You must be wrong in the head to go gallivanting up World’s End…’

‘It wasn’t snowing when I left,’ she answered back. No wonder she’d never seen him. Yewells didn’t go in pubs. They were Satan’s houses. ‘Anyway, the house found me and kept me safe.’

Her rescuer didn’t seem interested in her explanation but kept on whistling and shouting.

‘She’s alive, up here!’ he called, and suddenly there were dogs sniffing at her, faces peering under sack hoods with burning cheeks, and she was pulled through the window to safety.

‘So you spent the night at World’s End,’ laughed Uncle Tom, shoving in her hand a flask of hot soup, which burned her throat. ‘Sip it slowly. You’re a lucky blighter to find this ruin and hole up like a lost sheep. Happen you’re a Yewell through and through. Now, young lady, don’t you ever do such a daft thing again. You have to treat these hills with respect or they’ll take your fingers off in a few hours and your life by nightfall. Mam and Dad are going mad with worry at Cragside. Don’t you go putting lives at risk again…silly mutt!’ Uncle Tom stared at her with cold eyes and she cried.