When I snapped back to my body on the ground, I could barely breathe. My ribs seemed as tight as a brutally laced corset. My body held me as securely as if it were a prison.

Father was expected home in the afternoon. As the light faded, Hindley and I ran down to the gate once, twice, three times, but there was no sign of him. Mother put off supper for one hour, then two. Bedtime came and went and we still waited. It was close to midnight when the door latch was raised and in Father came looking as pale as death and so weary he could barely set one foot in front of the other. He staggered under the weight of a bundle he carried in his arms and collapsed into a chair, groaning. It was only after Father had drunk a little of the brandy Mother held to his lips that he managed to speak.

Father told me and Hindley that we must wait for our presents: first, he had one for Mother. “It’s a gift from God, I believe,” he said. “Though he’s dark as the night.”

Carefully, Father unwrapped his bundle. Inside was a child, a boy maybe a year older than me. His arms and legs were stick thin, his cheeks hollowed, his eyes too big for his head. The boy stank to high heaven. I remember thinking that I was no Beauty, but Father had brought home the Beast.

Mother was horrified, her mouth hanging open. There was a long silence, broken only by the ticking of the clock and the crackle of the fire. And then Mother erupted at Father. “Are you mad? Haven’t we got our own children to feed and clothe? What are you thinking, bringing home a filthy beggar boy?”

Father said he’d found the thing wandering alone in the street. No one knew who it was or where it had come from. He could hardly leave it to starve, Father said. Saving it was his Christian duty.

Christian.

Duty.

They were two words Mother couldn’t argue with. She rumbled on at Father a while longer, but her temper finally rolled away like a passing thunderstorm. Father told the maid, Nelly, to take care of the child, to wash him and give him clean clothes. When that was done, Father said, the boy could sleep in the room I shared with Hindley and Nelly.

And maybe the boy would have done, and maybe things would have turned out fine. But before Nelly led the boy away, Hindley started poking around in Father’s coat pockets. He pulled out the fiddle he’d asked for, but it was in pieces, having been accidentally crushed on the journey. Despite being a strapping lad more than twice my age, my brother began to scream like a baby. No one told him to hush himself or be good. It so enraged me that when Father said my whip had got lost on the moor, I spat in the face of the beggar child. It had to be his fault.