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something important that’s made me leave the Home.’
    Mrs Nash grinned. ‘Do come inside, Miss Knip, won’t you?’
    â€˜Don’t mind if I do.’ Miss Knip trod carefully, making sure she squashed the daisies growing on the doorstep before she followed Betty Nash inside.
    â€˜Sit down, Miss Knip, please,’ Betty said. ‘How can I help?’
    â€˜Have you got a girl here?’ Miss Knip asked. ‘I’m looking for an eleven-leaver, and I thought you might have got her  … ’ she fought to hide the eager anticipation showing in her face. She was already looking for signs of the girl in the room. ‘I’m sure she came this way.’
    â€˜Ah, now, Miss Knip, a great many of your young castoffs come this way, as you know, and we take them in and nurture them, just as you’d wish us to do,’ Betty Nash said with a horrible, leering grin. ‘But  … ’
    â€˜This one had a cat.’
    â€˜Oh, the one with the cat! That stringy little girl?’ she said. ‘Blondish hair? Such a fine needle-woman she was.’ Betty Nash shook her head. ‘I wish we did have her, Miss Knip, only she’s gone, the little minx.’
    Miss Knip bit back a cry of displeasure. ‘That’s a shame; I thought she might be here. I was hoping  …  Well, I’ve got a proposition to put to your young Tapper,’ she went on. ‘Is
he
here?’
    Tapper slipped out of the scullery as if he’d been hiding there, listening – which he probably had, Miss Knip thought.
    â€˜Where else would I be?’ he said, taking up a position propped against the wall, like a length of wood. ‘So, how’s things at the orphanage, Knips?’ he added. ‘Beaten anyone this morning?’
    â€˜Less of your cheek,’ Miss Knip said haughtily. ‘And it’s
Miss
Knip to you.’
    â€˜That cat didn’t come inside,’ Betty Nash interrupted. ‘Biggest cat I’ve ever seen. Tapper would’ve trapped it, only he couldn’t get close. Shame, ’cos it would’ve made a beautiful fur cape.’
    â€˜And the two of them made a mighty hole in our thatch,’ Tapper said. ‘She owes us, she does.’
    â€˜All the more reason for you to help me then, Tapper. Because I want to find her too,’ Miss Knip said, locking her eyes with his. ‘I think she went to Stollenback – in fact, I’m sure she did; if she came this way where else would she go? I want you to find her. I want you to find out where she is hiding and keep an eye on her for me. Don’t let her know what you’re doing. I don’t want to alarm her. I just want to know her whereabouts. I want her watched. It’s imperative that she doesn’t get wind of us, do you understand?’
    â€˜Yeah, yeah  …  I can do that, but what’s in it for me?’ Tapper was picking at his teeth with a sliver of wood as if he was hardly concentrating. ‘I can’t leave me old ma all alone unless there’s a very good reason for it.’
    â€˜Money,’ Miss Knip said. ‘Money to pay for the roof and a whole lot more.’
    Tapper flicked the toothpick into the fire. ‘How much?’ he said, leaning over the chair beside her. ‘You got to make it worth my while, Knips.’
    â€˜A fortune,’ Miss Knip said.
    Tapper and his mother exchanged a greedy, happy smile. ‘I’m your man,’ Tapper said.

10
Gloriana
    â€˜Don’t look so worried, Birdie,’ Glori said, grinning at Sparrow. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
    She pushed open the shabby door.
    This was the moment for Sparrow to run if she was going to. But she couldn’t. Her legs were too tired and Glori didn’t seem like a bad person, not really. And Scaramouch was not jumping out of her arms and running away either, so it had to be all right. He was awake and