then that I had behaved very foolishly. I scoured the town and all the outlying villages all that day and the next, looking for them – but they were nowhere to be found. It was as if they had disappeared into thin air, and despite all my best efforts, I have never been able to trace them from that day to this.’
His eyes were so full of torment that Molly’s heart went out to him.
‘So, perhaps you will understand now, Mrs Ernshaw, why the sight of Amy wearing Jessica’s locket affected us as it did, and perhaps you will be kind enought to explain to us how you came by it and put us out of our misery?’
Molly lowered her head. It was time to confess to the lie she had lived ever since that fateful Christmas Eve so many years ago. She had no doubt whatsoever that once the truth was told, her relationship with Amy would never be the same again, but what other option was there? The thought of losing this girl, whom she had loved as her own, was more than she could bear, but now the truth could no longer be avoided and so she looked at Amy with all the love she felt for her shining in her eyes.
‘I’m afraid yer won’t like what I’m about to tell yer, my love,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘And I just pray that when I’ve finished, you’ll forgive me for the lies I’ve told yer, for I swear that anything I have ever done was in what I thought was your best interest.’
Wrenching her eyes away from Amy’s she now raised her chin and looked Mr Forrester directly in the eye as she told him, ‘Twenty-two years ago to this very night I was makin’ me way home from the ribbon factory in Abbey Street where I worked. It were a wicked night, much as it is now, wi’ the snow fallin’ thick an’ fast. I was tired out an’ longin’ for me fireside, so I decided to take the short-cut through the parish churchyard. It was as I sheltered in the doorway that I heard a whimper, like someone in pain. I don’t mind tellin’ yer, me heart were in me throat, but after a time I plucked up me courage and ventured nearer – an’ that was when I found this poor young woman who looked to be in a right bad way. She were burnin’ up wi’ fever an’ I thought she must be delirious, ’cos she kept askin’ me to take her baby, though there were no baby to be seen. Anyway, I decided that I would have to run an’ fetch help for her. There were no way I could have carried her, so I set off, after taking the bag at her side, as she insisted. I were hopin’ that there would be somethin’ inside it that would give me an inklin’ as to who she was, so I could contact her kin for her.’
The room was so quiet now that you could have heard a pin drop, and after wetting her dry lips, Molly forced herself to go on. ‘I got back here as quick as I could, an’ then I ran to fetch Bessie, Toby’s mam.’ She cocked her thumb at him. ‘Then, after I’d explained what had happened, Bessie ran all the way back to the church, bless her heart, to see how the poor girl was before she ran to get a doctor for her. But when she got back there the doorway was empty, though how the poor lamb ever managed to walk away, I shall never know, ’cos I would have swore she were knockin’ at heaven’s door.’
Molly paused to dab at her eyes with the hem of her pinnie. She could remember the poor young woman’s face as clear as day.
‘Anyway, when Bessie got back we opened the girl’s bag … an’ that’s when we found Amy. Cold an’ as still as death she was, an’ at first me an’ Bessie thought she was dead, but Bessie worked on her, rubbin’ her little body an’ warmin’ her, an’ eventually she let out a little cry. Then we were up against the problem o’ what we should do with her. There was nothin’ in the bag to tell us who she was ’cept for that locket, a shawl an’ a few clothes. It seemed the only place for her was the workhouse but I couldn’t stand