Sapphire Battersea by Jacqueline Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

sure. He had been very tall, a good six foot, with the strong shoulders of a man – but of course my Jem would be nineteen now, no longer a boy. I had had no contact with him – he hadn’t bothered to answer a single one of my letters – though Miss Smith had indicated that some at least of my letters had been confiscated. He had played fast and loose with me, filling little Eliza’s head with daydreams that he was going to marry her – but I had been his first love. Perhaps he had calculated when I was due to leave the hospital, and had come all the way from the country to meet up with me? And I had walked straight past him, not giving him a second glance!
    How could I have been so cruelly ignorant? I had been boasting this very minute to Mrs Briskett about my powers of recollection, yet I had failed to recognize my dearest Jem.
    ‘Please, please,
please
let me return,’ I cried. ‘It is a matter of life and death. I
have
to see that young man, the one waiting for me at the hospital gates.’
    ‘I beg your pardon, missy? You surely cannot have followers already – you’re only a little girl!’
    ‘No, Jem is my
brother
– my foster brother. Oh, it was him, I am sure of it now. Please, Mrs Briskett, I will be a good girl for ever – I swear it – if you’ll just let me go back and tell him I haven’t really forgotten him.’ I seized hold of her meat-red sleeve imploringly.
    She shook my hand off straight away. ‘You’re being ridiculous, Hetty Feather. Control yourself, otherwise I shall feel obliged to have a word with the master about your impulsive behaviour. Then you will have the unusual distinction of being dismissed before you have even taken up your position,’ she said. She wagged her fat finger in my face. ‘This is your last chance!’
    I
knew
it was my last chance. I should have dodged away from her and run like the wind all the way back to the hospital – but I hesitated fatally. I did not know my way through the bewilderingly busy streets of London, but that was no excuse. I struggled, but not determinedly enough.
    Mrs Briskett marched me into the great noisy station, pushing me so hard in the small of my back that I stumbled in my clumsy boots and nearly fell to the floor. She jerked me up and hauled me up the steps into a carriage. She seemed so powerful I feared she was going to hang me by my feet from the coat-rack like a skinned rabbit – but she thrust me into a corner seat instead, sitting down so close beside me I could not budge.
    ‘There now. Sit quiet and no more nonsense,’ she said firmly.
    I sat with my eyes closed, thinking back to that moment outside the hospital gates. I tried hard to bring that tall brown figure into focus. Had it
really
been my Jem? I could not be quite so sure now.
    I thought back to my early childhood. I remembered Jem lifting me up in his arms, carrying me everywhere. I remembered our times in the treehouse, when he patiently played my childish pretend games. I remembered him teaching me my letters and reading to me night after night. I remembered the way he’d held me tight on that long trip in the wagon, when I was leaving home for ever. I kept my eyes shut, but I could not stop the tears seeping out from beneath my lids and rolling down my cheeks.
    ‘There now, child,’ said Mrs Briskett, her voice surprisingly soft. ‘Don’t you cry now. I can’t abide tears. No doubt this is all queer and strange to you. You’ll be feeling homesick for the hospital, but that’s only natural.’
    It would have been exceedingly
un
natural for me to be homesick for the hospital, but it seemed simplest to let her think that. I was amazed by her sudden change of tone. She’d been so tart and testy previously.
    She patted my shoulder in a comforting way. ‘I remember
my
first position, as a kitchen maid in a huge great house in the country. It was very grand, but it felt so dark and strange and gloomy compared to our cottage at home. I cried myself to