Step By Step Paperback: Allison & Busby 2007 ISBN:978 074908 3298 Hardback: Allison & Busby 2003 ISBN0749006676 Audio: Magna 2004 Large Print: Magna 2004 C) June Francis 2003 Growing up in the back streets of Chester at the beginning of the 1900s, Hannah and Alice are used to supporting each other when family life gets tough. But when Alice’s mother dies in childbirth, Hannah fears for her friend who will be left to protect her brother from her violent father. Hanna’s worst fears are realised when Alice’s father violently attacks her own mother. As Alice tries to escape her father’s clutches, Hannah is struggling with the consequences of her mother’s accident. Torn apart through circumstances, will the two girls ever be free of the weight of the past? CHAPTER ONE EXCERPT 1903 Hannah Kirk and Alice Moran lay on the lavatory roof with their hands clapped to their ears, but the screams from the bedroom of the house on the opposite side of the back entry still managed to get through. ‘I can’t stand it!’ cried Alice through gritted teeth, emerald eyes wide and frightened in her blanched face. ‘It’ll be over soon. It’s got to be,’ said Hannah with a touch of desperation. Screams from the Morans’ household were nothing new. Last night, Hannah’s dah had gone round there and dragged Mal Moran off his missus. Jock Kirk was one of the few men in Newtown, outside Chester’s ancient city walls, who had a wife with the courage to send her husband to face the large Scotsman. Florrie Moran’s baby shouldn’t have come yet and it was possible that mother and baby might not survive. Hannah could not help worrying about what would happen to Alice, and Kenny, Florrie’s stepson, if left alone with their pig of a father. Suddenly, Hannah realised that the screams had stopped. She removed her hands and, at the same time, Alice’s body sagged. Had the baby been born at last and was it alive? They both gazed up at the sash window open at the top. Hannah raised herself carefully, ears straining for a baby’s cry, but then came another scream that was so piercing it threatened to tear the sullen clouds apart. It definitely frightened the life out of her, as well as scaring the pigeons on the roof of the Angel Hotel on Brook Street, five minutes walk from Chester’s General Station; the July evening was filled with the whirring of their wings. ‘What’s happening now?’ Alice, her slender body in the neatly darned blouse and let-down but still-too-short skirt, shot to her feet, ready for flight. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I’ve got to go, whatever your mam said about keeping out of the way. I’ve got to know what’s happening!’ She scrambled to the edge of the roof and climbed down. Hannah heard the click of the latch on the back door and then the click of the one across the narrow entry as it opened. She watched as Alice raced up the Morans’ yard and the thin cry of a newly born infant came on the air. A smile created tiny dimples at the corners of Hannah’s mouth. It seemed that her mother, Susannah, had been mistaken and the baby was alive. Whether it would live long was another thing altogether. Back to Books1 Back to Main Page