Finally, as it is a season of confessions, I tell her all about Miss Walker. It is done with now, so what have I to lose? I recount Mrs Priestley’s dramatic exit from Crow Nest and seemingly our lives, and Mariana laughs, as I did, but appreciates the loss of a friend. Would Mrs Priestley ever imagine that myself and Mariana were just as close? Probably not. She only saw us together on occasional visits as we tended to travel together or meet elsewhere; Mariana was never a permanent part of Shibden or Halifax life. She never wanted to be. Miss Walker, on the other hand, was in the centre of it all, somehow related to every other person in Halifax. We both feel sad after all our confessions, but neither has a solution for the other. She does not ask me to take up with her again. We do not even kiss. We are both alone.

To be condemned to a life alone over a potential child! I wouldn’t want the worry, the constant fear for them; so few survive to adulthood. What if you do not even like them? Or they kill you on the way out? I do not see the appeal.

Miss Walker

Within the day I am in love with them all, the three little babes. I want them for myself but am glad at least that they are related so I can have some small claim on them. They have the Walker colourings that my sister and I share: golden hair, pale skin and a small splattering of freckles, as if added as an afterthought. Elizabeth has raised them well; they are calm and smile readily. They are content and interested and after just one day the two little toddlers come to me and laugh and let me hold them; Mary and George. The baby Elizabeth lies happily in my arms gazing up at me with her wide bright eyes. I imagine she wonders how I can look like her mother but be different somehow. I could take the children out without Elizabeth and anyone would assume they were mine. I would give anything to walk into the town with baby Elizabeth in my arms and hear people coo over her and smile at me over what I have produced.