Nobody's Child

 

Long listed for The Romantic Novelists' Association Major Award 2007

Sarah Broadhurst's view -- This author won the inaugural Catherine Cookson Prize and she is very good indeed.

Mslexia -- Elizabeth Gill -- Valerie Wood's skill takes you through a complicated plot to a magical ending -- a page turner of the best kind.

Mature Times -- every one of her novels have been best sellers, establishing her as one of the best of the new generation of saga writers.

Evening Telegraph -- The winner of the first Catherine Cookson Prize will delight her growing following with this saga.

The Times -- Saturday April 21st 2007 -- Top 50 best seller list.

'When Laura Page goes to the remote Holderness village of Welwick, it is to try and discover the mystery of her mother, Susannah's early life. Now a successful business woman in Hull, Susannah never speaks of her childhood, when she was brought up with the terrible stigma of bastardy -- of being nobody's child.

Born into poverty, living in a tiny labourer's cottage with her father, Susannah's mother had caught the eye of the local landowner's son. She was his one and only great love, but when their daughter Susannah was born he could not acknowledge his child but had to watch her growing up in hardship. As the years passed and Laura had begun to be curious about her mother's past, would she ever be reunited with the father she had scarcely known?'

Nobody's Child -- a passionate story of poverty, heartbreak and a love that never dies.
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Chapter One
1880

Laura stood by the edge of the saltmarsh gazing over the Humber estuary. She kept very still so as not to disturb the hundreds of wading birds; curlew, shelduck, redshank and oystercatcher that were probing the mudflats for shrimps, lugworms and sea snails. It was just after mid day and the sun glinted sharply on the wet surface of the estuarine silt. Was this the spot where her mother had stood debating her future? Had her grandmother come here to contemplate hers? She looked back over her shoulder. The carriage that had brought her was a good distance away and beside it, her brother, in a caped coat, top hat and warm scarf was pacing impatiently.

Her feet were cold and wet and she glanced down, ruefully regretting that she hadn’t thought to wear more sensible boots than these highly polished ones. Her eyes wandered over the spread of saltmarsh and were caught by the different species of plants. Some look like Michaelmas daisies, she thought; perhaps they’re sea asters. She narrowed her eyes and noticed other plants and fine leaf grasses. Pink thrift, blue couch grasses, and sea lavender. Some of the plants were growing in the deep channels and runnels, which were filling rapidly as the tide turned, flooding the front of the marsh. Mother would know what they are, she mused. She was a country girl.

‘Laura!’ James’s voice broke into her meditation. The wind was blowing towards him, off the estuary, carrying the sound away, back towards the village of Welwick; yet it was loud enough to startle the feeding birds, causing them to rise up in a soaring feathered flight to freedom. ‘Come on! It’s freezing out here and the tide is turning.’

She shivered, the coldness of the wind and his words biting in to her. So it was.

‘I don’t know what on earth you are doing, Laura,’ her brother grumbled as she returned. ‘What a god-forsaken place this is!’ She lifted the hem of her wool coat as he helped her into the curricle, and then seated himself beside her, taking the reins and cracking his whip to urge the roan coloured pair back towards the village. ‘I’m thankful you asked me to drive you and not Stubbs. He’d have thought you mad, wanting to come out here!’

Not mad but curious, she pondered as they drove down the rutted track and glanced curiously at the village homesteads as they passed. Did Mama once live here in one of these cottages? She would never say, only that she had been born somewhere round here, and that she knew nothing of her own mother either. Only her name. Mary-Ellen.

‘Why do you want to know about the past anyway?’ James continued brusquely. ‘We know who we are. Mother lived here only briefly. She was widowed when Father died at sea. What more is there to know? Leave it at that!’

I can’t, she thought as they drove on through the village of Patrington and on the turnpike road toward the ancient town of Hedon. I have to know. I need to know who I am and where I came from.

Their mother, Susannah, had always been reserved and unwilling to speak of her background. She said she hadn’t known her mother or father, but had at last decided to humour Laura and tell a little of her own childhood as she had grown up in isolated Holderness.

‘As I’ve said before, I can tell you nothing of your grandparents,’ her mother had said, and her eyes were wistful. ‘When I questioned Aunt Jane, who was my mother’s cousin, or her mother, my great aunt Lol, about whose child I was, they simply said --.’ She’d swallowed hard and her eyes had filled with tears as she whispered. ‘Nobody’s. You are nobody’s child.’