Most times, Bessie thought she must have been here forever.

That she’d simply appeared one night between two of the girls as they slept. Between Lottie – of that she was sure – and another. Who the other was didn’t matter. Maybe a girl now in another bed, maybe one now grown and sent to work as a maid for one of the elegant ladies who sometimes visited the orphan asylum. She imagined herself a scrawny baby, blue with cold and mewing with hunger. In her imagination she saw Lottie wake and wrap her body around her to keep her warm, so that she’d stopped crying then, and fallen asleep till morning.

She never imagined what happened after that, what Matron’s reaction would have been at finding a new baby in the dormitory.

But when she’d told Lottie her thoughts, Lottie had laughed and told a different story.

‘You weren’t no baby,’ she’d said. ‘You were walking, and talking some already. Not much, but talking all the same. It was the week they shot Ben Hall – I remember, because it was all the teachers talked about. Anyway, I was scrubbing the steps at the front of the main building, and I saw them bring you here. You were crying and kicking and screaming, and when Matron told them to put you down, you tried to run off. Matron caught you and told you to stop this nonsense, stern like, giving you a shake, and you just crumpled on the ground like she’d beaten the fight right out of you.’

‘But who brought me here?’

‘A woman. And a police constable.’

‘My mother?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘Why? Why would my mother want to give me away?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t your mother. Maybe you’re an orphan just like me. I don’t know, do I? Don’t you remember anything?’

Try as she might, Bessie couldn’t remember any of it. In the five years she’d been here, the strict routine of prayers, work, school, and more prayers that defined life at the Protestant Orphan School had erased any memory of her earlier life. Sometimes, in that peaceful state between sleep and wakefulness, she thought she could remember a pale woman, and the haunting fragment of a song. Once fully awake, however, those memories would be swept aside to make way for the realities of another day, so that she’d stretch out her fingers, seeking the comfort of Lottie’s body next to hers, hoping to fade those realities for just a little longer.Most times, Bessie thought she must have been here forever.

That she’d simply appeared one night between two of the girls as they slept. Between Lottie – of that she was sure – and another.

Continue reading the extract here…

Buy a copy of Orphan Rock here.