Berlie Doherty - Far From Home - The sisters of Street Child

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd,

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Far From Home

Text copyright © Berlie Doherty, 2015

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2015

Berlie Doherty 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

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007578825

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007578696

Version: 2014-11-19

‘A terrific adventure story, heart-warmingly poignant and a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. A magnificent story.’

Daily Mail

‘Berlie Doherty has magic in her’

Junior Bookshelf

For Tommy, Hannah, Kasia, Anna-Merryn, Eda, Leo and Tess

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk Far From Home Text copyright © Berlie Doherty, 2015 Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2015 Berlie Doherty 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 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780007578825 Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007578696 Version: 2014-11-19

Praise Praise for Street Child , the companion novel to Far From Home : ‘A terrific adventure story, heart-warmingly poignant and a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. A magnificent story.’ Daily Mail ‘Berlie Doherty has magic in her’ Junior Bookshelf

Dedication For Tommy, Hannah, Kasia, Anna-Merryn, Eda, Leo and Tess

Tell Me Your Story, Emily and Lizzie

1. Take Us With You, Ma

2. Safe Till Morning

3. The Two Dearies

4. Lame Betsy

5. Where You Go, I Go

6. Snatched in the Night

7. No Charity Children Here

8. Alone

9. Mrs Cleggins

10. We’re Going to a Mansion, Remember?

11. Bleakdale Mill

12. What Kind of Life?

13. A Pattern of Sundays

14. Winter

15. Miss Blackthorn

16. I Knew Your Ma

17. Cruel Crick

18. Sunshine

19. I Can Buy Our Freedom

20. Buxford Fair

21. Clog Dancing

22. Bess

23. The Lost Children

24. The Terrible Accident

25. No News for Emily

26. Where Am I?

27. Robin’s Plan

28. The Sheen

29. Revenge

30. I Can’t Remember

31. After the Fire

32. A letter from Dr Barnardo

33. Plans

34. One Last Thing

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By the same author

About the Publisher

We’re Emily and Lizzie Jarvis. We’re sitting by the window in our room. Outside, we can hear a soft kind of sighing, like the wind in the trees, though we know it isn’t that really. It’s a comforting sound, and it’s lulling us to sleep. But we can’t sleep yet. There’s so much to think about first, so much to talk about. So much remembering to do.

Would you like to know our story?

There used to be five of us in our family, and now there’s only two. After Pa died we had to move into a room in a big, crowded tenement house with Ma and our little brother, Jim, and we just managed to keep going because Ma got a job as cook in a Big House. But then she fell ill and she had to stop working. There was no money left to live on, no money for the rent. She gave her last coin to Jim and told him to buy a nice pie for us all, full of meat and gravy. He was so excited. He was too young to understand that Ma thought it was the last good meal we would ever have. But she couldn’t eat it, she was too ill.

And then the owner of the room came for the rent, and when he saw Ma’s empty purse, and her too sick to earn anything, he turned us out on the streets. Where was there to go? Ma took us to the Big House, down the steps to the kitchen, and she begged her friend Rosie to look after us. And then she told us we must stay there, without her. She must take Jim with her, and she must leave us behind. It broke her heart to tell us that, we knew. It breaks our hearts to think about it. But we must think about it. We must tell our story, every bit of it, so we never forget what it was like for us before we came here.

This is our story.

“Take us with you, Ma! Don’t leave us here!” Lizzie begged.

“I can’t,” her mother said. She didn’t turn round. “Bless you, I can’t. This is best for you. God bless you, both of you.”

Mrs Jarvis took Jim’s hand and bundled him quickly out of the door. It swung shut behind them with a loud thud.

Immediately Lizzie broke into howls of grief. “Ma! Ma! Don’t leave us behind!” she sobbed. “Don’t go without us!”

She tried to wrench open the door, but her sister put her arms round her, holding her tight. “It’s all right. It’s all right, Lizzie,” she whispered.

“We might never see them again!” Lizzie shook her away and covered her face with her hands. She didn’t want to see anything, didn’t want to hear anything.

“I know. It’s just as bad for me,” Emily said. “I didn’t want her to go. I didn’t want Jim to go.” Her voice was breaking up now; tiny rags of sound like brave little flags in the wind. “But Ma had no choice, did she? She wants to save us; that’s what she said. She brought us here so Rosie can take care of us.”

Rosie, their mother’s only friend in the world, came over to the two girls and drew them away from the door. “I’ll do my best,” she told them. She sat them down at the kitchen table where she had been making bread for the master of the house. She started smoothing flour away with the wedge of her hand, then tracing circles into it with her plump fingers. It was as if she was looking for words there to help her. All that could be heard were the shivering sobs that Lizzie made.

“Listen, girls,” Rosie said at last. “Your ma’s ill. You know that, don’t you? She ain’t going to get better.”