Free Saturday's Child by Ruth Hamilton Page B

dream. Why, if she could face the humiliation, she could easily afford a few cleaners to come in and mend this place.
No. She had to do it herself. Whilst having no concept of what she was looking for, she knew that she would recognize whatever it was when she found it. Someone else might throw it away with all
the other wreckage. After all, it was probably just another very old piece of paper.
    Yes, the money was there, but money was not the issue; what Nellie wanted was to trace her own history, her background. To do that, she needed to be clean and respectable. The Hulmes, gentle,
kind people, had been good to her. They had taught her to read, to count, to draw, paint and sew. They had loved her, had protected her from a world that was often cruel to a child who was
different. But those two good people had told her nothing beyond the fact that they had chosen her to be their daughter.
    Closing her eyes tightly, she tried to revisit the dream, to remember the sounds contained within it, but, as ever, she failed. Yes, it was time to find out the whole truth.

Five
    Why did the little things get her down? Lily Hardcastle put the iron on the hearth and sank into a chair. In the end, it was the tiny details of life that corroded the surface,
burning away till flesh and bone got wearied.
    For a start, there was him and his nose. He’d never warned her before the wedding, hadn’t bothered to tell her that he spent most of his time at home with a finger stuck up one of
his nostrils. Sam Hardcastle was probably the world champion nose-picker, such a perfectionist that his wife was surprised that he had stopped short of removing brain tissue.
    Lily shook her head and heaved a great sigh. Her husband ought to have cups and certificates all over the house, his name in the papers, a letter from the king. And Sam had become so absorbed in
his hobby that his features seemed to rearrange themselves throughout these regular excavations, gob wide open, face like a fit, as Lily’s mother had been heard to opine. At work, he mined
coal; in his house he carried on mining, wiping each retrieved item on the cushion that supported him. Lily was tired of washing his ‘crusties’ off the cover. At least the deposits were
mostly on just one side of the chair, as his second picking finger had been blown off in the war. Sam always used his little finger, just occasionally inserting a longer digit when that extra
quarter-inch was required.
    Danny, her eldest, had started to drink, although his attitude remained apologetic and he always tipped up money for his keep, bless him. He ate with his mouth wide open, did Danny. It was like
sitting across from a miniature version of a cement mixer, contents rolled this way and that, a great deal of noise accompanying the process. She’d told him over the years that these
performances rendered her sick in the stomach, and the lad had tried, but he couldn’t seem to eat like a normal person.
    Aaron. Oh God, Aaron. Where had she gone wrong at all? Aaron had feet. He hadn’t always had them, but they had burgeoned in recent months as he strode towards manhood. She had bought a
special bowl for Aaron’s feet, and many pairs of socks, too. He was supposed to clean his feet straight away when he returned from school, though he seldom did. Whatever came out of
Aaron’s socks should be taken to a laboratory for analysis and given to the War Office to be used as an offensive weapon next time Germany kicked off. It would be like Napoleon’s
retreat from Russia, the enemy drifting away into oblivion, many never to be seen again.
    History was interesting, thought Lily, who had started to pick up factual books from the library. Yes, and Aaron’s feet produced something very close to mustard gas, of that Lily was
certain. She never had to wonder where Aaron was – she just followed her nose.
    Roy was still a kiddy, but Lily knew what was coming. Both the older boys had been blessed with teenage