The Family Way (Molly Murphy, #12)

Elaine laughed. “Allowed out? Slip out? Honey, we are prisoners here. Haven’t you noticed Sister and her keys? We can’t even get to the nuns’ part of the building.”


“What about the chapel?” I pictured it in my mind’s eye, with each half open to the altar. “All one has to do is go up to the altar and walk around into the nuns’ half and leave through their door.”

“I tried that,” Elaine said. “When they are at one of the services in chapel they lock our door. When they are not they lock their door.”

The tension that had been steadily growing inside me was ready to explode. This charade had gone on long enough. I would go to Sister now and tell her that I had changed my mind and no longer wanted to stay. Blanche could have her bed back and I’d be leaving.

“I need to go and find Sister Jerome,” I said.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Elaine warned. “She’d think you were trying to get out of work, and you don’t want to annoy her on your first day.”

“But I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to stay,” I said.

This made Elaine laugh. “Oh, that’s a good one,” she said.

“What do you mean? She can’t keep me here against my will.”

“My dear sweet innocent, she wants that red-haired baby. She wants it badly. There is no way she is going to let you go,” Elaine said. She threw another raspberry into the basin, then paused to brush back a wayward curl from her face.

“Surely, if I went to the other nuns and explained to them—Sister Perpetua seemed nice enough. They’d understand, wouldn’t they?” As I said this it occurred to me that perhaps they enjoyed their share of the money that Sister Jerome earned for them and they too were looking forward to the money this red-haired baby would bring in.

“You’d never have a chance to speak to them. We’re cut off from them, in fact the only time we see them at all is through the screen at morning mass.”

“What about all the other times they go to pray? Don’t nuns have services in chapel all the hours of the day and night?”

“They do, but I told you—they lock our door when they are in chapel.”

My indignation was now rising. “This is ridiculous,” I said. “I’m not going to stay against my will. What about those girls who act as porters? They can open the front door. Doesn’t she worry about them getting out?”

“You’ll soon notice that the only girls selected to be porters are those who really want to be here and have nowhere else to go. Also those who aren’t likely to have a beautiful baby.”

I listened to this in stunned silence. It was almost too much to believe. Then I shook my head. “Very well, if she thinks she can keep me locked away in here, I’ll escape. There must be a way to climb out somewhere.” As I said this I looked at the wall with its broken glass on top.

Elaine shook her head. “In case you haven’t tried yet, none of the downstairs windows open and the upstairs windows only open onto this garden. And there is only one door that connects our part of the building to the front part where the nuns live, and that door is always kept locked.” She moved conspiratorially closer, lowering her voice even though we were far enough away from the bean pickers. “To tell you the truth I’ve been itching to get out of here myself. Not to run away or anything. I know I’ve got to see this through if I want to have a chance at a normal life. But just to be part of the outside world for a while—for the hell of it. So now that you’re here, we can maybe work on something together. There may be a way to climb over the wall from the roof of the henhouse. We’ll have to experiment.” She grinned. “Yes, that sounds like fun. You’ve cheered me up a lot.”

She hadn’t cheered me up at all. I looked across at the chicken run, tucked in the corner against the far wall. It was completely exposed to the convent building with not a single tree or bush in front of it, and what’s more, I couldn’t see any way that we could climb up to the roof of the henhouse unless we could get our hands on a ladder to use—but if the nuns locked us in so securely, I doubted that they’d be careless enough to leave a ladder lying around. And then there would be the small matter of hauling ourselves over that wall with its broken glass—and lowering ourselves down the other side. I didn’t fancy my chances of climbing or dropping down the other side in my current condition.

But one thing was sure. I was leaving this place one way or another. Keep calm and think logically, I told myself. There was no need to panic. I would first ask Sister Jerome if I could leave. She seemed to have taken to me, as a fellow Irishwoman. If she denied my request, I’d have to think again. Then I realized that I did have a way to contact the outside world and let Sid and Gus know about my predicament. Blanche was due to leave in the morning. All I had to do was to find a pen and paper and write a message to them which Blanche could deliver to The Lighthouse Inn or even mail to them. It was at the most only a matter of waiting. Thus relieved I went back to work.