The Family Way (Molly Murphy, #12)

Twenty-six

I went back to picking raspberries, my hands trembling a little. Now I knew that I had to tread very carefully. From everything I had seen, Sister Jerome was a ruthless and determined woman. I had to make sure that she did not suspect I wasn’t who I claimed to be. I had to play the sweet, obedient Irish girl and look for my chances. She had to sleep sometime. Where did she put those keys when she slept? Did she lock her own door at night?

Now that I realized I was probably committed to spending the night here, my thoughts went to Sid and Gus again. They would be so worried about me. I just prayed that they didn’t try to send a message to Daniel about me. I’d never hear the last of it if he knew what a stupid thing I’d done. Hear the last of it. I toyed with the words. They had such a ring of finality to them. Then I told myself that I was perfectly safe for now. Sister wanted that red-haired child. She would do anything to keep me alive and healthy, at least until my baby was born.

I went back to my raspberry picking until a bell started tolling from the chapel tower.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“It’s four o’clock. Time for the nuns to head back to chapel,” Elaine said. “They have an office every four hours, day and night. You wouldn’t catch me wanting to be a nun.” She laughed. “Not that I have the temperament for it. I enjoy the pleasures of the flesh too much. In fact if Sister only knew how wicked I really am, I’d probably be kicked out tomorrow.”

“So we don’t have to stop and pray or anything?” I asked.

“We just keep on working until suppertime at six,” she said. “Then it’s bedtime at eight-thirty, up at six in the morning, breakfast then mass then work. It’s like school, isn’t it?”

I nodded, distractedly, because something had just struck me. I had my escape route—my way out of here. It was the chapel. All I had to do was to go up to the altar and then cross into the nuns’ side of the screen. A priest would be there. He would surely come to my aid if I appealed to him for help. Now I felt a little better. And hungry. I realized I hadn’t eaten a proper meal all day. When the bowl of raspberries was full I volunteered to carry it through to the kitchen. The kitchen was a cavernous room with only a high window that showed a square of blue sky. It was like a Turkish bath in there with big pots bubbling away on a woodstove and three girls stirring away at them, looking like the three witches in Macbeth.

They looked at me inquiringly as I came in.

“Where did you spring from?” one of them asked.

“I just arrived,” I said. “I’m Molly. Here are the raspberries Elaine and I picked.”

“And where’s Elaine?” the same girl asked with a belligerent tone to her voice.

“Where do you think?” another girl said, chuckling. “Off lollygagging somewhere to get out of her share of the work. That’s what we’d expect from Elaine. Never done a real day’s work in her life.”

“Welcome to the female answer to Sing Sing, Molly,” one of the girls said. “I’m Gerda, this is Alice and Ethel. When is your baby due?”

“Another month,” I said, trying to remember exactly what I had said to Sister Perpetua.

“Same for me” the skinny, undernourished creature called Alice said. “Maybe we’ll be lying side by side, calling out to the saints to save us.”

“What a charming prospect you paint,” I said and all three girls laughed.

I looked around the kitchen. “I don’t suppose there is any food I could have, is there? I arrived at lunchtime and I haven’t eaten a bite all day. I don’t think I can hold out until supper.”

Gerda, who seemed to be in charge, pointed at the shelves along one wall. “There’s bread and butter there, and cheese and tomatoes. Help yourself. The one thing they don’t stint on here is food. They recognize we’re eating for two and they want healthy babies. So we can eat all we want.”

I was already on my way to the bread box and started carving myself a hunk of bread. It was freshly baked and I was positively salivating as I spread thick butter onto it and then a good slice of cheese.

“And Sister likes us to drink plenty of milk,” Gerda said. “To make sure we’ve got enough of our own to feed the baby. The milk is kept down in the cellar while the weather is as hot as this. It’s nice and cool down there.”

“The cellar?” Images of rats, spiders, and cockroaches jumped into my head, and those broken steps down which Katy had plunged to her death. “Oh, no thanks,” I said. “I don’t fancy going down to the cellar by myself. Water will do.”