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of this great meaty woman at all. I felt a further few weeks in the hospital might even be preferable. What was she doing here? Why had
she
come to fetch me? Where was Mr Buchanan?
    ‘I thought I was going to be Mr Buchanan’s servant,’ I mumbled.
    ‘Indeed you are, child.
If
you are of age.’
    ‘Speak up, Hetty, and reassure the lady. You’ve never held your tongue for long previously,’ said Matron Bottomly.
    ‘I’m fourteen. I’ve always been very small.’
    ‘With carrot-coloured hair too! I hope you don’t have a temper to match. Lord knows why we’ve been lumbered with you,’ said the meaty one, giving me a prod in the chest. ‘Come along then, child. We’ve got quite a journey ahead of us.’
    ‘Goodbye, Hetty Feather. Try your hardest to be dutiful and diligent. Might I suggest, ma’am, that you treat her severely right from the start. She has wild ways,’ said Matron Bottomly.
    ‘Frankly speaking, she could do with a good whipping every now and then,’ said Matron Peters.
    I glared at them. My lips were pressed tight together. I wouldn’t even say goodbye. I clutched my box in both hands. My heart was beating fast. I decided to run for it the moment the great door was opened, but the large woman seized me by the shoulders, her fat fingers digging into my flesh, kneading me like bread. She marched me down the long pathway to the outside gate. I twisted my neck to look one last time at the hospital where I had been locked up for so long. I stared at the barred attic window and saw a ghost of myself looking down.
    I shivered in the cold air because I didn’t have any kind of mantle or shawl.
    ‘Ah, you’re not quite so bold now!’ said Mistress Meat. ‘You’re quivering like a jelly in a mould.’
    ‘I am simply a little cold, ma’am,’ I answered, my chin up – but she only laughed at me.
    She called to the porter at the gate. ‘Is that hansom cab still waiting? Come along, Hetty Feather – he’ll be charging us a fortune as it is.’
    She hustled me through the gate towards a horse and cab. I couldn’t help feeling a little thrill of excitement at the thought of such a journey. She pushed me up inside the cab and followed me close, spreading her dark-red skirts all around me. I had a glimpse of her legs in pink silk stockings, like vast pork sausages. I wriggled away as far as possible in such an enclosed space, while the driver above us clicked to his horse. As it started trotting I heard shouting. I couldn’t make out the words clearly, but I was almost sure that someone was calling my name.
    I struggled round, half hanging out of the cab window, and saw a young man in brown corduroy running after us, waving his arms and shouting.
    ‘Sit
down
, miss! You don’t want to tumble out and break your head,’ said the meaty one.
    ‘But that man is calling me! He’s waving as if he knows me,’ I said, bewildered. ‘Please let’s stop the cab and see what he wants.’
    ‘Don’t be so silly, child. We’re not stopping the cab for you to chatter with any Tom, Dick or Harry. We have work to do! I came to fetch you out of kindness, in case you were confused on the journey – but I shall be terribly behind all day long now.’
    She commanded the driver to get a move on. We soon rounded the corner of the street, going at such a pace that there was no way the young man could catch us.
    Whoever could it have been?



 
     

     
    I LOOKED LONG and hard at the meaty woman as we rode along together, squashed up like two pigs in a poke.
    ‘Why are you staring at me? Have I got a smut on my face?’ she asked.
    ‘No, ma’am. I was just wondering who you are,’ I said truthfully. ‘What is your name?’
    ‘I am Mrs Briskett,’ she said, announcing her name as proudly as if she were the Queen of England.
    Mrs Briskett? Wasn’t brisket a type of beef? Oh, what a glorious name for this great bovine woman! I felt the most insistent giggles tickling my inside. I had to clench my teeth