Born to Trouble by Rita Bradshaw

were now her responsibility, and she would do all she could to keep them safe and warm and fed. School didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except her promise to Seth.
    She slid off the bed, a thin little figure in the shadowed room, and made her way downstairs to get the dinner ready for her mother and the sailorman.

PART TWO
    The Romanies
    July 1901

Chapter 5
    The pavements and buildings were radiating heat, and the evening sun was still hot as Pearl pushed the creaking perambulator through the dusty streets in the direction of home. The country was in the grip of a heatwave, and when Pearl had risen very early that morning, it had promised to be another baking July day. Her mother and a woman named Cissy Hartley, a new and seemingly bosom pal of Kitty’s, had been ‘entertaining’ in the front room for most of the night, and when the men and Cissy had left just before dawn, her mother had come upstairs to tell her she expected the boys to be kept quiet all day so she could sleep. James and Patrick had been irritable and tetchy with the heat for the last week, and so Pearl had determined to take them out for the day, Tunstall Hills way.
    After packing a basket with some food and a bottle of water, she’d lifted three-year-old James and two-year-old Patrick into the rusty old perambulator they’d bought from a neighbour for a shilling or two the year before, and off they had set.
    They’d had a wonderful day. Pearl smiled to herself as she looked at the two little boys, rosy cheeked and fast asleep in the depths of the pram. The long walk to the outskirts of Bishopwearmouth had been worth it. Once they had left the noise and dirt of the town behind, the essence of summer had been everywhere. The still air had been heavy on the hills with the perfume of eglantine, the wild briar; the bright sunshine warming the foxgloves and brightening the dog roses and daisies, clover and forget-me-nots which had painted the banks and meadows. The boys had rolled and tumbled and frolicked like two excited puppies when she had found a spot to settle at, loving the freedom and softness of their surroundings after the grim streets and stinking back lanes.
    When they had worn themselves out she had let them sleep before lunch under the shade of an oak tree in the scented grass; sitting with her arms wrapped round her knees, she’d gazed into a shimmering heat-haze before falling asleep herself.
    They had picked armfuls of wild flowers in the afternoon to take home, sweetly scented in both leaf and bloom and glowing with colour. These were now lying at one end of the perambulator by the boys’ heads, and although they were beginning to wilt, they were still lovely.
    She would do this again. Pearl mentally nodded to the thought as the smells and squalor of the East End began to make themselves felt. She rarely went to school now. Most days she took care of the boys and saw to the house and meals, sometimes while her mother slept and sometimes because Kitty hadn’t come home the night before. On those occasions her mother would return at some time during the morning smelling of drink and smoke and demanding a hot meal before falling into bed after drinking more gin. Pearl had learned to take the money for rent and food out of her mother’s purse while she slept, because once she was awake there were always arguments. Funnily enough though, her mother never challenged her on this practice.
    The nearer they got to Low Street, the more the stink of festering privies and brooding decay impinged on the lingering beauty the day had produced in her mind. The smell of the docks hung in the air, a composite of stale fish, filth and polluted water, and for a moment Pearl was seized with the wild notion of turning the perambulator round and wheeling it as fast as she could away from the East End, away from her mother, for ever. But there was nowhere she could go. And so she walked on.
    Kitty was slumped at the kitchen table when Pearl entered the