Free Alone Beneath The Heaven by Rita Bradshaw

as the ace of spades in there, they reckon none of it is any good, it’s goin’ to cost a mint to replace it.’ Lizzie’s tone plainly stated she was glad she wasn’t Sarah and responsible for such destruction. ‘I bet Mother McLevy is sent packin’, you know what Matron’s like.’
     
    ‘But she didn’t mean it.’
     
    ‘Don’t make no difference.’
     
    ‘Well it should, it should make a difference.’
     
    ‘Aye.’ Lizzie’s expression was pitying. ‘Do you want me to read to you, or play I-spy or somethin’?’
     
    ‘I don’t care.’ She didn’t, she didn’t care about anything any more. If Mother McLevy was going to lose her job, just because she’d been thinking about her, she wouldn’t be able to bear it. It wasn’t fair , and the doctor had said it would all be all right. He’d lied to her. The awfulness of the thought turned her stomach over. She had to do something, but what? What could she do?
     
    The thought that had been there earlier resurfaced. She would run away. She sat quiet, lost in the enormity of it. But she could, and she’d leave a note to say she’d lit the candle, not Mother McLevy, and that it was all her fault. A little glow of martyrdom warmed her briefly. She could say she was older and get work as a scullery maid or something in a big house. She knew she could do it. A girl had done something similar in the Sunshine Review , a twopenny magazine that Cissie Wright had had smuggled into her and which had been passed round the dormitory.
     
    And then Mother McLevy wouldn’t get wrong, and she wouldn’t have to see the Matron again, or Mary Owen, or any of them. Her innate honesty forced Sarah to acknowledge her motive wasn’t totally sacrificial. Would Rebecca miss her now this new girl had come? The pain which had been grinding away since Rebecca’s visit intensified, causing her to press one small fist hard against her mouth. She hated skipping anyway, it was stupid. They were all stupid.
     
    At ten o’clock she slid out of bed carefully and crept to the door. Mother McLevy was sharing the slightly larger room of Mother Bryant next door, they had squeezed another bed into the limited space earlier that evening, and Sarah had been listening to continuous snoring for over half an hour now while she thought out her plan of action.
     
    First she’d have to pay a visit to the laundry - she couldn’t run away in her shift - and she just hoped there were some boots drying in the boiler room; it’d been raining that day so there might be. Course, they’d likely be boy’s boots - her small nose wrinkled fastidiously - it was normally the boys who got theirs soaked, but it couldn’t be helped. And then . . . then she’d climb out of the laundry-room window - the main front door and the two side doors would be locked by now - and if she skirted round to the front and kept to the edge of the main drive she should reach the gates within five minutes. Her stomach turned over with a mixture of nervous anticipation and fear.
     
    It was a pity she didn’t dare go to the dormitory first; she’d have liked to have taken the blue velvet ribbon Mother McLevy had bought her for her last birthday, and the sampler she had been working on for the last twelve months and recently finished. It didn’t occur to her the sampler was the indirect cause of all her present trouble, precipitating, as it had, Mary Owen’s fermenting envy and spite. But she didn’t dare - she shook her head in agreement with her thoughts - it’d be just like Mary Owen to wake up and start yelling her head off, she’d got a voice like a foghorn as it was.
     
    The corridor outside was ominously dark and empty, and again her stomach jerked and trembled. Mother Shawe had said the bogeyman would get them if they left their beds at night. She paused on the threshold as her eyes darted into the gloomiest corners, but facing Matron in the flesh was more frightening at this moment than spectres unknown,