Leah Fleming - The Girl From World’s End

LEAH FLEMING

The Girl From World’s End

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2007

Copyright © Leah Fleming 2007

Leah Fleming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9781847560063

Ebook Edition © 2009 ISBN: 9780007334957

Version: 2018-06-19

In memory of Kathleen, who loved these hills.

…grief has no wings. She is the unwelcome lodger that squats on the hearthstone between us and the fire and will not be moved…

Arthur Quiller-Couch

Armistice Day Sermon, November 1927

Title Page LEAH FLEMING The Girl From World’s End

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One A Change of Sky

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Part Two Darkening Skies

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Part Three The Snow House

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Author’s Notes

About the Author

About the Publisher

West Riding of Yorkshire, 1926

A girl of about eight sat swinging her legs to and fro to keep them from going numb, watching the sky growing dark above. The weak December sun dipped behind the high moor and soon the cobbled streets would be crusted with frost. When was Father going to come out of the Green Man and take her home? The church clock had struck half-past four. Soon the mill hooter would buzz across the rooftops and the clatter of clogs would deafen the streets.

It had been a grand afternoon: one of the good days when Paddy Gilchrist woke up by himself, whistling and promising her a ride on a tram to Bradford to look in the shop windows and hear the Christmas brass bands. They had got as far as the park, where he’d pushed her on the swings and slides, but then they’d made a detour through the back streets of Scarperton.

‘I’ll not be a minute, Mirren. Time for my medicine–just a wee nip to keep me warm,’ he laughed, his dark eyes pleading as he saw the little blue ribbon on her coat lapel and the wince of disapproval on her face.

She was proud of that badge and the signed certificate from the Band of Hope that said not a drop of liquor would ever pass the lips of Miriam Ellen Gilchrist.

‘Don’t be long,’ she pleaded, trying not to pout as her lips trembled. ‘You promised me a ride up to town.’

‘Aye, I know, lassie, but you don’t begrudge yer dad a little comfort now, do you? You sit tight and I’ll buy you some sweeties when I’ve had my snifter.’

She had sat on this bench so many times, dreading that the father who went in standing would be the one who’d come out on all fours. The Green Man was that sort of pub.

Paddy and Mirren didn’t live alone. There was a master in their rooms: one who ruled over them night and day, whose presence lurked like a ghost in the corner of the compartments of the disused railway carriage that was now their home. He was a magician, full of piss and wind and wild schemes, who could turn her dad into John Barleycorn, the drunken sot who needed a guiding hand to round the corners on his way home, knocking folk off the pavement as he sang out of tune at the top of his voice. Sometimes she opened the latch and he fell through the door, stiff like a board.

John Barleycorn had stale breath and leaking pants. He stole her father’s hard-earned wage and the food from their table, shaming her before school pals playing in the street, who would look up and snigger as she and her demon-possessed father wound their way down the ginnels from the pub, Mirren staggering under the weight of him. She worshipped her father–he was tall, handsome and strong–but she hated John Barleycorn, the drinker who was so weak and silly.

Demon Drink was not like the pantomime devil with horns and a forked tale, all red and black, shouting from a stage, or the wily tempter from the pages of her Sunday school prize book, with forked tongue and goatee beard. He came and went for no reason.

Sometimes he disappeared for weeks and gave her back the father she loved: the Paddy Gilchrist who had wooed and won young Ellie Yewell away from her farming family in the big Yorkshire Dales farmhouse, the railway navvy with his squeeze-box and fancy dancing and Scottish charm, who promised her the moon, sun and stars if she would be his bride. Then he went off to war, leaving his new bride with a bairn, Mirren’s angel brother, Grantley, and with no family to support them until he returned wounded right badly in the leg.

If only Mother and little Grant hadn’t died in the terrible sickness that came when she was a baby, leaving her motherless. How she wished they were all together, snug by their fireside of an evening, not freezing to death outside a public house.