Christmas at the Farmhouse - Rebecca Boxall Page 0,37

of England – but I just followed what everyone else was doing and, although Janet rolled her eyes through most of the service, I found the rituals quite soothing. It went on a bit, though, and the pews were horribly uncomfortable: awful on our backs. I was desperate to spend a penny by the time it finished, too, and when I reached the end of my pew to genuflect like the girl in front of me, I assumed I wasn’t the only one because all of a sudden she made a funny noise and I looked down to see a puddle of water on the aisle. It took me a moment to realise it must have been her waters breaking.

The nun who’d been so brusque with me on my first day had eagle eyes and noticed immediately. She came striding over, crossing herself as she prepared to haul the poor girl out of the church, hissing at me to clean it up. Sister Rosa showed me where I could find a mop and a bucket and I spotted a WC in the same place, thank goodness, so I made use of that while I was there. Then, while the other girls finished filing out of the chapel, I gave the floor a good clean. My task completed, I looked up at the stained glass window above the altar, depicting Mary with baby Jesus in her arms, and I wondered what she must make of us all. Would she really think we were just a job lot of fallen women who deserved to spend our lives feeling shameful, or would she have sympathy for us? Surely she would show us compassion and acceptance? I thought she would. It was just a shame society wouldn’t.

On Sunday afternoon a lot of the girls received visitors, though I doubted my parents would want to see my face again until they considered the whole sorry chapter to be over. I wished that Robin could find a way to see me. I was still counting on him to find us a solution before the baby was born. But that Sunday there were no visitors for me.

I had an unwelcome visitor at the beginning of July, however – my Moral Welfare Worker. I was in the middle of polishing the stairway banister when one of the nuns found me and told me I was to go to Matron’s office. I washed my hands and then hurried along to the forbidding room I’d not yet stepped foot in. I knocked on the door.

‘Enter!’ said the brisk voice.

‘I was told to report to you,’ I said, looking at Matron, who was sitting at her desk with glasses perched on the end of her nose. Next to her, on another chair, sat an older woman with iron-grey hair tied back in a bun and a hard-looking face that observed me disapprovingly. She wore a particularly unpleasant mustard-coloured blouse with a pussy bow.

‘This is your Moral Welfare Worker,’ Matron said, gesturing at the stern-faced lady. ‘You can talk to the girl in here,’ she said to the woman. No introductions had been made, so I was none the wiser in terms of the lady’s name, though presumably she knew mine.

Matron hurried off, shutting the door behind her, and the Moral Welfare Worker (what a mouthful) told me to sit down. She took out a file and read through it, shaking her head and tutting disconcertingly as she did so.

‘Your expected date?’ she asked me, pen poised.

‘The twenty-third of December,’ I told her, glad it felt like such a long time away.

She scribbled something on her pad. ‘And you understand that you won’t be given the usual six weeks?’ she asked.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I had no idea what she meant.

The woman sighed and looked at her watch. ‘Most of the girls are given at least six weeks after the baby’s birth before the child is removed. In your case, your father doesn’t want you to have the opportunity to bond with it, so he’s asked for the removal to take place the day after the birth.’

‘Removal?’

‘Adoption. We already have a couple lined up. They’re not worried about gender. As long as the child appears healthy they’ll be taking it on. You’re lucky, some of the mothers have to wait a few months.’

Lucky? In what possible way could I be described as lucky?

‘But I don’t want the baby to be adopted. I want to keep it.’

‘We hear a lot of talk like