On a Making Tide by David Donachie

remitted had been ignored. Word eventually came through Emma’s mother, and though carefully couched it was clear that the connection with Sir John, who was now free to pursue a second wife, had been broken.
    Money did come, enough to pay for Emma’s keep, but not her schooling and no information either as to how Mary Lyon had earned it. Grandma Kidd was quick to kill off any speculation, as though Emma couldn’t help but notice how the whole family, who had boasted often of her mother’s good fortune, fell silent now, given to mumbling responses rather than clear answers when their neighbours made enquiries.
    The news that her mother was coming home ‘to sort matters out for Emma’s future’ induced mixed feelings. Emma’s sense of attachment to both Hawarden and her nan, the pleasure she took in the tasks she now performed, made her unsure if she wanted anything to be different. Yet the other half of her reasoning engaged with her innate sense of adventure: the little voice that insisted that change was best. What worried her was the kind of transformation her mother had in mind.

    ‘If she’s not to be put to learnin’,’ insisted Mary Lyon, ‘then she’ll have to be put to something other.’
    ‘Leave the child be,’ hissed Grandma Kidd. ‘She ain’t of an age for toil.’
    ‘I don’t recall you saying that when I was just gone nine.’
    ‘Times alter,’ the old lady barked.
    Anything but school, was Emma’s single thought. Her ear was pressed to the door, not that it needed to be. Like everything in the Steps, windows and roof included, it was a poor fit, a source of fierce draughts in winter. It was no aid to slumber when the men of the house, her father and uncle Willy, decided to stay up late over a jug of grain spirit, waste a candle and their breath, noisily putting to rights the county of Cheshire, as well as King George’s domains. Nor did the door disguise the grunts of copulationbetween her grandparents, a rare occurrence but never a silent one, which taxed her powers of belief. Now, neither woman was making any effort to keep quiet and Emma’s mother continued in the same hard tone in which she’d made her opening remark.
    ‘It’s a burden to me that is hard to bear, Ma, though I’ll stand it to see her lettered and able to count. But I can’t be paying out good coin just so she can loaf around here.’
    ‘She don’t loaf around. She helps.’
    ‘Do what? Ply coal by the road for a few pennies a day so folk can cook their vittles? Is that to be the lot of my girl, a-squatting there waiting for some bright jay with half torn breeches to come along and catch her fancy?’
    ‘She’s too sharp for that.’
    ‘How come you’re so damn sure, Ma? You fell for my pa in like manner.’
    ‘Am I to be recalled for every sin in my life? That was in times past, an’ we ain’t done so bad neither. The Kidd house owes nowt to nobody.’
    ‘Then how come I’m required to send so much?’
    ‘It be ’cause I’m raising your bairn.’
    ‘All the more reason why it’s got to stop. I saw her when she came in, filthy she were, her hair all matted with the black dust. I could scarce bear to kiss her cheek.’
    ‘If she be that covered in filth,’ Grandma Kidd growled, ‘you’ve no fear for her being taken up by any passing fancy man.’
    ‘Ain’t I? Well, let me tell you I knows more about that than you. As for times, they don’t change when it comes to falling for the wrong blade, and I stand as testimony to that.’
    Ordered to wash and brush her hair, Emma left the door and went to the rickety washstand, the voices fainter but still audible as they continued the argument. It was odd to the girl, who recalled that her mother and her gran had been right friendly at the time she had gone off with Sir John. But there had been more coin around then, enough for ribbons and a new dress. She decided, as she watched the water in the basin turn from clear to dark grey, that she would wear