A Liverpool Lass by Katie Flynn Page A

to the classroom, only to see, like, but there was no sign of Lilac. When I found Miss Hicks she said she’d sent her to bed, but young Mary Bliss said as how Miss Hicks had laid into Lilac with her stick, marked her right across her poor little face, and the child’s disappeared, Mrs R, really she has. I told Miss Maria and we’ve searched high and low, but she’s not in the house!’
    Nellie heard her own words tumbling one over the other in her haste and worry, heard her accent thickening, and was simply past caring. She just knew that something awful had happened to Lilac and all because she, Nellie, had been too busy mooning over a young man to take immediate alarm when Lilac had not appeared at tea-time! She might love Davy Evans – well, she thought she did – but she could not love anyone more than she loved Lilac and now the child was missing! But Mrs Ransom’s large face did not reflect the worry that Nellie assumed she would feel.
    ‘She’ll have hid away somewhere, to lick her wounds,’ she said. ‘What do the other children say?’
    ‘They think she’s run off,’ Nellie said. ‘Miss Hicks hits awful hard, Mrs Ransom; I should know!’
    ‘She’s nowhere to run,’ Mrs Ransom observed with unconscious cruelty. ‘She won’t have gone far.’
    ‘She might have ... I’m going to look,’ Nellie said. Her hands flew to the strings of her apron and shebegan untying them and then heaved the garment over her head. ‘It’s warm out, I won’t need a coat.’
    ‘Check the cloakroom,’ Mrs Ransom said suddenly. ‘See if her coat’s there. If it’s gone I suppose you’d better search.’
    Nellie nodded and left the room, but she ignored the long corridor down which the cloakroom was to be found and made instead for the front door. She knew Lilac wasn’t in the house and she knew, also, that if the child had run away there was somewhere she could run. To Coronation Court. Oh, the authorities were always on about the scandal and disgrace that the courts brought to the city, saying they should be pulled down because they bred disease and pestilence and encouraged ignorance and unnatural practices. But they seemed not to notice how warmly the people of the courts felt for one another, how closely they clung!
    Lilac had noticed, though, and remarked on it. Hand in hand with Nellie, as they made their way back to the orphan asylum after Nellie’s Sunday afternoon off, Lilac chattered wistfully about the place and the people they had left, as though Coronation Court was infinitely superior to Rodney Street. Nellie had tried to tell her that at least she was getting a good education from the teachers at Culler’s, but Lilac had said she’d sooner go to a ragged school, like Matt and Fred, especially if it meant she could live in the court.
    As she was about to go out of the front door, Nellie heard her name called. She turned and saw Lilac’s friend Emmy waving to her. Emmy was a placid child with a long ginger pigtail and right now she was putting her finger to her lips and beckoning Nellie.
    ‘What is it?’ Nellie said rather sharply as soon as she was close enough. ‘I’m off out to see if I can find Lilac.’
    ‘She ran down the street, she were bawlin’ her eyes out,’ Emmy said plaintively. ‘She mighta took me ... I wouldn’t mind a-going outa here. I’d like to go to sea an’ all.’
    ‘To sea? She said she was going to sea ? Why on earth ... except that I’ve promised to take her there one day, only somehow time’s so short and I do like to go back home when I get a few hours off ... thanks very much, chuck, now you’d better go to the playroom or you’ll be in trouble with your group leader.’
    ‘Shan’t, we’re all in the same group,’ Emmy said.’ Tell Lilac we’re on her side when you see her.’
    ‘Of course,’ Nellie said, comforted by the younger girl’s words. It was nice to know that Lilac was popular, despite being in a class with girls who were mostly a