Page 76 of Hidden Daughters (Detective Lottie Parker #15)

Gabriel had no idea how long she’d been in the convent, but one Christmas and one Easter had passed.

No one from her family had visited her in all that time.

She’d been abandoned. This felt even worse than when her mother had died.

At least then she had family around her.

She had a purpose. She’d cared for her father, brothers and the new baby.

But in this horrible place, she was nobody.

Nobody’s child, they called her. Well, she was somebody’s daughter once, but it seemed that now they were right.

There was still no sign of the education she was supposed to get.

She needed to learn more reading and writing.

She wanted to. But she never once saw a classroom.

She depended on the others to sneak books to her and help her with big words.

But that wasn’t an education. She supposed the real education she’d been getting was one in cruelty.

It hardened her heart and destroyed her soul. And she was only a little girl.

One day, she slid into the big machine to scrape the sheet off the sides of the drum. Her hands were torn and the calluses started to bleed. She could feel tears bubble, but she had a job to do.

‘Will you hurry up, or I’ll switch the machine on with you in there,’ a nun shouted.

The words echoed deep inside her and she hurried to get the sheet unstuck.

No way did she want to be inside if they closed the door and boiling water spurted in.

Climbing out, she scratched her knee on the rough bit of steel where the door shut, and she hesitated, terrified the blood would get on the sheet.

The old nun standing in front of her was new. Gabriel hadn’t seen her before.

‘Well, if it isn’t the midget,’ the nun roared.

‘Heard all about you. You are like a weasel burrowing in where no one else can fit. Do you know why that is?’ She didn’t wait for a reply.

Gabriel didn’t have one anyhow, because she had no idea what the nun meant. ‘It’s because you are a sneaky bitch.’

Gabriel stood with the sheet draped across her arm and her hands and knee bleeding.

Some internal alarm was sending signals to her brain to be careful.

This nun was unlike the others. She was ancient, big and plump.

Most were skinny and scrawny, like the girls themselves.

But this nun was well fed, and she had a nasty twist to her mouth, her lips curved downwards as if she had never learned to smile.

Her hair was wild and bushy, bursting out of the veil, and her eyes…

they were the darkest eyes Gabriel had ever seen.

She had never encountered anyone with such piercing blackness pulsing from their soul out through their eyes.

She felt as if she was staring evil in the face.

‘And what do we do with sneaks?’ the nun bellowed.

‘I… I don’t know.’ Gabriel ignored the alarm bells and somehow got the words out.

‘You don’t know?’ The nun shook her head. ‘You are an evil child.’

It was then that Gabriel realised all work had stopped.

The slow hum of the machines was like a radio switched on low in the background.

The girls were standing frozen in the act of ironing, lifting baskets, folding.

A tableau of inactivity. Of fear. She spied the young novice at the door.

She had befriended Gabriel, brought her books to read, helped her with her writing.

Was she going to run for help? Or was she just ready to run?

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you mean,’ Gabriel said. Bravery overcame fear for an instant. A fatal instant, as it turned out.

Without warning, the nun hit out with her crucifix, cutting into Gabriel’s cheek, then wrenched her arm with the sheet and tugged the cotton from her.

She twisted it around Gabriel’s body, and even as she struggled, she knew she could not win over the woman’s size and strength.

She was like a mummy, with only her face visible. She felt she was about to die.

‘No!’ she cried.

‘Come here, someone help me,’ the nun roared.

No one moved.

Then someone else came into the room. Footsteps stomping on the concrete-slabbed floor. A man’s footsteps.

The mechanical hum of the machines seemed louder. Breath was held in the air. A stagnant silent fear permeated the steamy room.

The nun’s eyes blazed as she acknowledged the man who had entered.

She felt weak and strong simultaneously and prayed to her mother to save her. She didn’t believe in God any more, but she believed her mother was waiting for her on some higher plane. But she’d deserted her too. Deserted her own daughter.

‘No, stop. I don’t want to go in there.’

Ignoring her cries, the man lifted her and threw her bodily into the large drum. He slammed the door shut. Gabriel’s hands and legs were bound tight by the sheet. As she struggled to free herself, she knew it was fruitless.

The drum started to move. To turn. She went with it. Her stomach roiled and fear turned to terror. She was trapped. She was going to die, the second the boiling water came through the tiny holes in the drum.

The first shot of water hit her between the eyes. And then her nose and cheeks. She coiled in horror as she was twirled around, the water rising with the heat. The heat.

The drum turned faster and faster, and before she succumbed to the swirling water, darkness overcame her. She would not see the light again.