You worry that if you don’t give Ma a good burial, you’ll never feel at peace again; that every memory of her will fill you with guilt. Your nan, who believed in these things, bless her soul, would say it would turn Ma into a ghost, forcing her to roam the earth forever, pleading for release and tormenting those left behind.
You think of the bracelet in the hem of your petticoat. That would certainly be enough to pay for a proper funeral and headstone; to lay Ma to rest the right way. You’re just about to offer the bracelet to the stretcher-bearer when you hear your ma’s voice in your mind. Keep your jewels for the living, darling – don’t spend them on the dead!
But then you hear your da’s voice saying, Be good to your ma while I’m gone – his last words before the soldiers hauled him away to a prison ship on the Thames. And with him locked up, and your sister gone, if you don’t honour and remember your ma, who will?
You have almost nothing left in this world, and you know that children like you can live or die from one day to the next as easily as rats. Except, you think, rats don’t have to plan for their future, or honour their dead.
To offer the stretcher-bearer your bracelet in exchange for a decent burial for Ma, go to scene 7
To keep your bracelet, go to scene 6.
To read a fact file about child labour click here, then return to this page to make your choice.
‘Sorry, Ma,’ you whisper to yourself, ‘but I think I need the bracelet more than you do, right now.’
One day, somehow, you resolve you’ll be rich enough to buy roses for every unmarked grave in London.
The stretcher-bearers shuffle off, leaving you alone – so alone. Not a soul in the world knows where you are, and not a soul cares.
No, that’s not true – Da cares, you think. And someday, somehow, I’ll find him again.
Since the door to your home is open, you go inside and fossick for any useful possessions, knowing that the landlord will arrive soon to move the next family in. There’s not much here that means anything to you anymore, though. You gather up a blanket and a pot, hoping to use, sell or trade them later.
You walk back out into the cobbled street, weighing up your options. You know you must be careful: stray children like yourself are gathered up by constables and dumped in poorhouses to work like slaves. That would be even worse than scavenging for work at the cloth mill as you did today.
Your mind is numb with shock and grief. You’re trying to put together a plan to find your da, but you’re shifting pieces of ideas around in your mind like a broken puzzle – bracelet; sleep; work; travel; hide – and nothing seems to fit. The light from a nearby tavern draws you in like a moth. Hungry and tired as you are, the beefy smell of an Irish stew is impossible to resist.
No sooner do you step through the doorway than you are yanked into the arms of a man who smells like beer and has one crooked eye that veers off to the left.
‘Eat up!’ he shouts. ‘No one goes hungry when Bobby’s won at the races!’
The men in the tavern all shout, ‘Hurrah!’ The one or two women there, who have loose hair and looser blouses, roll their eyes and laugh. A man plonks a plate of stew down in front of you.
Don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth, Ma would have said, and you gobble it up thankfully.
Someone is playing a rollicking jig on a fiddle. The man with the crooked eye is whirling elbow-in-elbow with a tousled brunette, her petticoats flying. The warmth and the heat and the noise seems to be chasing some of the numbness out of you, and you surprise yourself by laughing when a man with a goatee beard and a golden tooth drapes you in a pearl necklace and hoists you onto his shoulders, shouting out, ‘Here comes the Queen of all the Irish in London Town!’
A gust of cold wind blows through the tavern as its door is thrown open, and suddenly some of the shouts sound alarmed. The music skids to a halt. People scatter everywhere – out doors, upstairs, under tables – as the sound of whistles and boots fills the room. You are thrown off your perch on the man’s shoulders, to the ground.
‘They’re after Bobby!’ you hear someone shout.
One of the women scoffs, ‘Won on the races – like hell! I might’ve known!’
You realise that the pearl necklace the golden-toothed man draped over you is probably stolen, and the room is swarming with constables, so you fling it away as you dash out the back door.
Your bare feet are freezing and your heart is pounding like a drum as you dash down the alleyway. You suddenly remember you’ve left your pot and blanket inside. As you glance behind you, you hear a snarl, and a dog leaps from a doorway, snapping at your bare legs. You leap away from it with a scream, stumbling out into the road, right into the path of a horse.
You feel your head bounce as it hits the cobblestones. The hooves and carriage-wheels rain down on you, and your body is pummelled into the ground. You fight to get out from under the cart, but suddenly something in your chest goes crack, and you can fight no more. You can’t force any air into your lungs. Your mind shouts at your limbs to move, but you can’t get up.
‘Pfff,’ says a voice. ‘The carts don’t even stop when they knock them down these days. The families breed like rabbits in the slums, and more than half of them end
