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Back When We Meet Again Save as PDF
Chapters (57)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. Prologue
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  32. Twenty-eight
  33. Twenty-nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-one
  36. Thirty-two
  37. Thirty-three
  38. Thirty-four
  39. Thirty-five
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Thirty-eight
  43. Thirty-nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-one
  46. Forty-two
  47. Forty-three
  48. Forty-four
  49. Forty-five
  50. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  51. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  52. POPULAR BOOKS FROM THE ERA
  53. When We Meet Again
  54. A Conversation with Caroline Beecham about When We Meet Again
  55. Discussion Guide
  56. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  57. What’s next onyour reading list?

Alice had never felt as vulnerable and alone as she did now, not in all the days since Eadie had gone, as she grasped the immense task ahead of her, and Elizabeth’s kindness made her suddenly teary. “Thank you,” she said, turning quickly before the woman noticed.

Alice settled under the glare of an overhead light and picked up the first newspaper, recognizing the article as the one she’d seen at the adoption office. She felt a flicker of hope at the first few lines: Britain is ending the baby farming scandal. An act that comes into force on June 1 will prevent this and other forms of traffic in children. She reread the article because she couldn’t remember all the details. Only local authorities or a registered society would be able to make arrangements for child adoption and, most important, there could be no payment for a child without permission of a court.

She leaned back in her chair, gazing at the blank wall as she thought it through. Even though the act wouldn’t come into force for a few months, perhaps it could help her by scaring the traffickers. They had to know they couldn’t get away with it for much longer.

Encouraged, she turned to the next article, dated more than a month earlier, on February 2. The headline was even more explicit: Law Will End Baby Farming Evil. But as she continued reading, the blood drained from her face.

The byline announced: Jail for Women Who Sell Children, and the article reported that mothers who gave their babies up for illegal adoption would face either a fine of two hundred pounds or six months’ imprisonment. It added that these children had no name or identification, and therefore no citizenship or rights. Alice couldn’t draw her eyes away from the last sentence: By law they have no status. It was sickening, and far worse than Joanna had let on: Eadie didn’t even count as a person under the law, and Alice could be fined or sent to prison after June 1 if anyone thought she had given her daughter up voluntarily. And presumably the same law would apply to her mother since she had done exactly that.

She struggled to breathe as the low ceiling seemed to press down on her. Now she would have to be even more careful with the truth, and she urgently needed to speak with Olive Melville Brown: the journalist was the expert on this world and the people in it—and probably Alice’s only chance of finding Eadie.

Sixteen