The Silk Thief by Deborah Challinor

brim of her bonnet framing her pretty little face and a woollen shawl tucked around her trim figure. Actually, she was looking a little too trim these days, in his opinion.
    ‘Harrie! What are you doing out this early?’
    By way of an answer she raised her bare hand and slapped him hard across his face.
    ‘Ow!’ His hand flew to his stinging cheek. ‘What was that for?’
    ‘You know,’ she said bitterly. ‘How could you?’
    ‘How could I what?’
    But it was too late: Harrie was off down the street, her skirts flashing and her bonnet slipping, only the ribbons saving it from flying off.
    ‘Harrie? Harrie!’ Part of him desperately wanted to go after her, to stop her and find out what was wrong, but then the stuffy, straitlaced and proper side of him — the ex-navy captain and genteel doctor with a public practice — told him much more forcefully that upstanding gentlemen did not chase women down the street.
    So he watched helplessly as Harrie ran away from him.
    Harrie didn’t know how long she’d been wandering around. She’d come out early on the pretence of buying bread for the Barretts’ breakfast, but her intention had definitely been to confront James before he left for the surgery. She’d agonised since Friday night about the foul gob of poison Rowie had spat out at the burial ground, and while her common sense — and Friday and Sarah — had told her the revelation had been nothing more than a barb of pure nastiness, her heart had believed Rowie. And it still did. The voices in her head had been right after all. She had confronted James, but she’d barely said to him anything she’d wanted to say. The depth of his betrayal had rendered her virtually speechless. She felt even worse now, and she hadn’t achieved anything.
    She had so wanted him to be different. She’d so wanted him to be decent. She’d thought he was.
    And she’d been wrong.
    But this is what happened when you did the sort of things she’d done. This is what happened when you sinned. You paid.
    The streets were busy now. It must be nearly mid-morning. Nora Barrett would be very angry with her when she got back, and quite rightly so. She’d not been there to make breakfast, Samuel and Hannah had been due for baths this morning, and Abigail had wanted help with casting on the first row of a scarf she was knitting. She’d let them down. Blinking back tears, she crossed the street and headed north towards home.
    Outside the bakery near the corner of George and Jamison streets, the one that sold the moist pound cake and the good, crisp ginger biscuits, she came across a small boy sitting on the edge of the footway, his bare feet in the muddy gutter. Seeing his tear-stained little face and snotty upper lip, and already feeling distraught and terribly on edge, Harrie couldn’t help weeping herself.
    She crouched beside him. ‘Where’s your ma?’
    The boy looked at her and cried even harder. So did Harrie. She retrieved her handkerchief, blew her nose, folded it over to find a clean bit and wiped his top lip, and tried again.
    ‘Is she in the bakery?’
    He shook his head, his dark curls bouncing.
    ‘Are you lost?’
    Scratching at the ground with a short piece of stick, he nodded.
    ‘Have you got a name, sweetie?’
    ‘Davey.’
    Poor wee thing, Harrie thought, grateful to have someone to think about other than herself. He could only be about four and his dirty little feet were quite blue with cold.
    ‘Where do you live, Davey?’
    He shrugged, the shoulders of his grubby, patched, too-big jacket rising and collapsing.
    ‘On the Rocks?’
    He nodded.
    ‘What street, do you know?’
    ‘I’m hungry.’
    Harrie stood and offered him her hand. He scrambled up and went with her into the bakery, where she bought him two eccles cakes, which he scoffed in a minute flat. She hoped to God he wasn’t living on the streets.
    Outside she asked, ‘Do you live in a house, Davey? With a ma and a father and brothers and