The Favourite Child by Freda Lightfoot Read Free Book Online Page B

her right there on the cigarette strewn floor, but because he thought so well of her, she never let on how she felt. She behaved as he wanted her to behave, like a lady. Even so, Jinnie worried about what he’d say if he knew the truth about her, how she’d had a back street abortion, slept with Billy Quinn since she was twelve, had even acted as a bookie’s runner for his illegal street betting ring. Oh, but she didn’t want him to find out, not ever. He wouldn’t respect her then would he? Or love her even a little bit. He’d treat her as she deserved to be treated, like dirt.
     
    ‘Get your coat on madam,’ Mrs Ashton announced one morning. She was already togged up in her own ankle-length, fur-trimmed number with a velvet toque pulled well down over her frowning brow. ‘We’re off out.’
    Jinnie had been sitting in the front parlour with no one to talk to but the aspidistra, so was more than ready for an outing; though why the woman should wish to take her anywhere, she couldn’t imagine. As they hopped aboard a tramcar at the corner of Derby Road and settled into their seats, Emily asked why it was that she didn’t have a job and Jinnie struggled to explain.
    ‘There’s not much work about for girls like me. Employers take one look and turn up their noses. Once yer on a downward slide, there’s no way back. I tried one or two places but give up in the end.’
    ‘Nonsense,’ Emily tutted, as if she could single-handedly cure economic prejudice. ‘There’s always work to be had, if you look hard enough. And where exactly do you live when you are not begging favours from your betters?’
    Jinnie squirmed with discomfort. ‘No place that I’d want to go back to, if I’m honest.’
    ‘Then we must find you somewhere better, something more appropriate. Life isn’t difficult unless you make it so,’ Emily admonished her, unclipping her purse and taking out a florin to pay the twopence fare. ‘As I said, I’m no fool Jinnie Cook. In my view your layabout way of life simply encourages immorality and promiscuity and it’s time you received the right sort of supervision, perhaps went down on your knees and expressed penitence for your wicked ways.’
    ‘Nay, I never did owt wicked in me life, not knowingly anyroad,’ Jinnie countered, and Emily cast her a sideways smile of satisfaction, pleased at having finally flustered her quarry.
    ‘It all depends how you define wickedness.’
    Jinnie simply looked perplexed by this, privately wondering how Emily would have held off Billy Quinn, if she’d been half starved and in his clutches.
    Emily took her to the Ebenezer Mission Home for Orphans. It was a dark, forbidding building with rows of windows looking out on to the street like blank black eyes. It seemed to Jinnie very like a reformatory or a workhouse. She felt her knees quake with fear as she stood in a tiny, brown-painted office and listened to Mrs Ashton discuss with the woman in charge what was to become of her.
    Jinnie was to sleep in a dormitory with fifty other girls and would work in the laundry, bleaching and scrubbing to earn her keep. Or so the warden, a large woman swathed in dark purple velveteen from neck to ankle, informed her in stentorian tones. Not that anyone asked Jinnie’s opinion on the matter. It was as if she didn’t exist; didn’t have ears, brain, or a tongue in her head to express views of her own. What hope did she have of getting a government to listen to her voice, vote or no vote, if she couldn’t even get a word in edgewise with two old women?
    The thought, inspired by her long conversations with Edward, drove her to speak up. ‘Hold on, have I no say in the matter?’ Jinnie began, only to have her arm grasped so fiercely by the purple dragon, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the woman had clapped her in leg irons. The next minute, Mrs Ashton had pressed a threepenny bit in her hand, told her to be a good girl and that she would be well taken care of, then