Free Underground Rivers by Mike French Page B

details of accounts, menus, servants, employees and at last the children who ended up here, abandoned for various distressing reasons.
    It makes for heartbreaking reading.
    It is not until I am on the third book that I find the treasure I am looking for; copies of tiny pieces of paper with almost illegible writing on them. It must have been nothing short of a miracle for a child in such reduced circumstances to be able to read and write and the evidence here is of a very rudimentary education. A desperate child had cried for help by scribbling on scraps of paper and then somehow smuggling them out of this cellar, below me now, where he or she was being held captive. My fingers tremble as I turn another page and read the story of the woman who kept this boy, Charlie, a prisoner for almost a year.
    Martha Brown, the childless wife of William, the owner of the orphanage, had longed for a child and thought that when they took over running the orphanage she would be able to satisfy her maternal desires by befriending the children. Her despotic husband had other ideas and forbade her to have anything other than the most necessary contact with them. Charlie stole her heart with his eagerness to be loved and above all to learn and she soon found a way to stage his disappearance, then keep him in the cellar which was well hidden and that William knew nothing about. Her desire to help him better himself was her downfall and Charlie, with his newly acquired writing skills, managed to smuggle out messages in his dirty linen, where a laundry maid found them. When it was brought to William’s attention, Charlie was released .. .
    The story comes to an abrupt end here so I can only assume that it was quietly covered up at the time and that whoever left the books in the cellar felt it was best to leave the sad tale where it belonged, in the past. I wonder what became of Charlie and Martha. Poor sad Martha, how I feel for her, how I empathise with her and as I close the old books, I accept finally that some psychic force or spirit has been reaching for me across the centuries.
    The three words predominant in Charlie’s scraps of writing, free, escape and help fidget in my head and as nausea invades my body I see what I have become. An unhealthy cloud lifts from my brain and I feel exhausted and weak with the knowledge that I have been living a lie for far too long.
    What I have to do now is let Archie go, listen to the messages he is leaving me in the books I get out for him, written in his own blood. It is time to accept that Archie will never be the boy I longed for, the grandson I will never have and let him out of my own cellar where he has been for the past year, a terrified ten year old, desperate to get back to his mum and far away from this mad woman.

Another Day
    byLucy Meroge Mwakulegwa
    It was the early hours of the African night and the full moon, which the natives called “the poor man’s lantern”, reflected the shiny dark river meandering over garbage heaps and across makeshift wooden bridges. On its journey through the slums, the river was joined by tributaries of little streams consisting of dirty water, from the trenches that ran between the dwellings, as well as human and animal waste.
    A rat scampered past from one of the buildings and into another. They had learnt to survive the harsh competition of foraging for the scarce bits of food with other scavengers who included dogs, goats and even humans.
    The collection of illegal structures housed thousands of people who had come into the city in search of work and a better life. They were built close together with occasional alleyways that led out to the narrow paths. In between, trenches divided the dwellings that facilitated drainage of rain and waste water. Often they would be filled with raw sewage and were also used by some residents to relieve themselves as there was no proper sanitation. Toilets were scarce, and those available were “let