Friendship's Bond by Meg Hutchinson Read Free Book Online

She had asked the same question of folk as she had looked for her daughter in the adjoining Queen Street, the busier Holyhead Road and almost every other street of the town, then when she returned home to find Deborah was not there she had repeated the process; asking, searching until the market place had emptied of customer and trader, the beer houses had closed their doors for the night and the last street lay empty and deserted. She had walked the long dark hours of night going from town to heath where the open coal shafts lost in the depths of shadow held less terror for her than the fears beginning to build in her heart.
    Men exchanging shifts at coal mine and steel foundries had shaken their heads at the woman out on the heath before dawn had lightened the sky and all had answered the same.
    No one had seen Deborah!
    No one had seen her pass on the road, or cross the waste ground off Lea Brook, no one had watched her come to the bridge spanning the water, no one had seen her fall in.
    Leah herself had found her child. A fast-flowing current had thrown and then held her daughter among the thick reeds hiding its verge from the bracken and low bushes of yellow flowered gorse that grew on open land.
    She had almost passed by without seeing. With tear-swollen eyes and numbed by hours of unrelenting anxiety she would have walked by, never have seen . . . never have found! But she had seen and she had found.
    She recalled the scene in all its detail as her fingers twined in the soft cloth of the shawl, reaching for the comfort which never came.
    She might have been beyond that spot, might never have witnessed that horror, but Fate had decreed otherwise. It was not to be given to Leah Marshall that she be told her one remaining child had been found by another, that she see her only when washed clean and laid in her coffin.
    With a shuddering pain-filled breath Leah stared into yesterday.
    Night was at last surrendering to dawn; the first beams of the rising sun flashing scarlet defiance over the narrow river had gleamed across a tiny island of colour, highlighting the patch of peacock turquoise.
    For a moment it had felt her feet were fastened to the ground yet tired as it was her brain had recognised what lay there trapped in the inky water, had recognised the material of the coat Deborah had so loved to wear, a coat of an almost identical colour to her lovely eyes.
    But those lovely eyes had been closed, their fringe of long lashes resting on cheeks the colour of marble, and the long fair silken hair was now threaded with slime-covered weed, weed wrapped round the floating figure clutching it. Every eddy of water threatened to rip the body from her grasp; but in that it had failed.
    She had cradled her dead child. There in the birth of a new day, alone beside that river, she had held her daughter close, had crooned softly the lullabies she had sung to her as an infant, rocked that cold, cold body as she had when pains of croup or fever had resulted in restless nights, had in the lonely silent dawn kissed that lifeless face gently as at every bedtime.
    Her words a mere whisper, Leah murmured to a daughter she could not see. ‘It were only goodnight, child, it were not goodbye for I can never say that word; it be as it is along of your brothers and your father, you don’t be gone for you bides ’ere in my heart where you will ever be.’
    Why had Deborah not gone to the chapel? How come she had gone instead to the river? And how in God’s name had she come to fall into the water?
    Walking on, Leah remained with her thoughts. The years had provided no relief from heartbreak and certainly none from the agony of a question carried in her most secret heart.
    She had put that question to no one, especially not to Edward Langley. His face had been alight that day he had come to the house, happiness at the prospect of seeing the girl she had known he loved apparent on every feature. That happiness had died as painfully as Leah’s