When I returned to the house after speaking with James, I didn't say anything to Miss Jenkins and she didn't ask any questions. Instead, she set me the task of peeling a handful of potatoes for supper that evening without saying more than she needed to. I knew I would have to tell her what James and I had discussed, but I didn't want to tell her until I had decided what I would say. Making the decision to leave seemed easy enough but figuring out how to tell them that I needed to leave would be far harder than I thought it would be.

How do I tell the people who had been so kind to me that I could no longer work for them? In truth, I didn't know how. It wasn't as though I could say the words and then return to peeling the potatoes as if I hadn't spoken. I hadn't had the courage to admit the truth about the factory for two weeks, and even then, it had been forced into admission. This was different. With the factory, I thought they wouldn't believe, that I would spill my heart out to them, and they would think I was lying to them. This time, I would have to tell them that I had made the decision to go. I was terrified of how they would react.

So, I sat at the kitchen table with a pile of potatoes in front of me and a small knife in my hand and peeled them without complaint. The bandage on right hand shifted slightly and the cut across my palm dug into the handle of the knife, but it didn't bother me. Miss Jenkins pottered around the kitchen, cutting meat up and dropping vegetables into pots of the boiling water. I knew I would miss watching her work when I left. Miss Jenkins had an almost systematic way of cooking, managing to keep the counters somewhat clean despite the amount of work that was going on.

"Have you almost finished there?" Miss Jenkins asked as she filled another pot with water and placed it on the stovetop.

"Almost," I replied. I sliced the knife across the skin of the potato and watched it fall into the table. "Done."

"Excellent. Just put the peelings in a bowl and I'll give them to Samuel later on."

"Alright."

"When you're done, you can clean up the pantry a little bit. It's a mess in there."

"Yes, Miss Jenkins."

I used my left hand to scoop the potato peel up and drop it into the bowl Miss Jenkins had passed to me. Being asked to clean the pantry reminded me of the previous time I had been forced to remain out of sight, right before Zachariah climbed the tree and everything started to go wrong. It had been that day that had set off the chain of events that led me to where I was when Miss Jenkins asked me to repeat the task that had caused so much harm already. I knew it was stupid to blame everything on a singular event, but if I hadn't been in the kitchen that day, I never would have known Zachariah had climbed the tree.

I sighed to myself and pushed the chair back against the floor. Whilst Miss Jenkins continued to prepare the supper, by dropping the potatoes into the water on the stove, I grabbed onto the cane and slipped into the pantry. It always seemed to end up in a bigger mess by the end of the day then it did at the start, Miss Ealing had never been able to keep the pantry clean when she cooked. Although Doctor Ealing had insisted I used the cane to get around, I leant it up against the table at the side of the room and opted for limping from one side of the room to the other instead.

Despite my fears of returning to the pantry, I found the task to be somewhat relaxing as it gave me a chance to think without Miss Jenkins or anyone else around. I may have set my mind of leaving the Ealing household, it may have been my final decision, but I couldn't help but think I was making the wrong one. Even with everything that had happened, leaving just didn't feel right. I knew I had to go, but how could I do something that felt so wrong in so many ways?

"I saw that James was here earlier on," Matilda's voice said behind me. I turned slightly, dropping the bag of flour onto the side as I did so.

"He was," I said.

"What did he want?" Matilda folded her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow towards me as she spoke. I hadn't seen her since the altercation the previous day, in fact, I had forgotten she was in the room to begin with. My focus had been on Robert and his reaction to everything, not Matilda.

"To check-in. Esther saw him in London and mentioned my knee and the infraction, so he wanted to talk to me."

"Why the woods?" She asked.

"Miss Jenkins wanted us to be out from underfoot, James suggested the woods."

"We need to talk about yesterday, about what you said to Robert."

I knew it was coming. From the moment she had appeared behind me I knew she hadn't come down for a friendly chat, that had never been Matilda's style. If I knew her as well as I thought I did, she had probably been lurking at the stairs since I returned from talking with James and she had simply been waiting for Miss Jenkins to set me a task outside of the kitchen. Even though I hoped our relationship had improved somewhat since the first time we had met all those months ago, I couldn't help but feel as though we were back to the very beginning. She had cornered me back then when I had done something wrong and now she was doing the same thing.

"When Father offered you your position six months ago, I made you promise not to hurt him, and you agreed. Yesterday, you broke that promise. Robert has been one of your strongest supporters since you arrived here, and you told him you practically told him you didn't care. He cares about you more than I have seen him care about anyone else we have had working for us and what you said yesterday crushed him. You broke your promise to me," she said.

"What was I supposed to do? My position here is on the line, don't you see that? One more mistake and I'm done. I know I was stupid yesterday, that I never should have said what I said, but I did. Unless your mother suddenly takes back the infractions, I can't even be seen in the same room as him.

"You really don't understand it, do you?" I raised a confused eyebrow towards her and gripped onto the edge of the table as my knee ached and shook beneath me. "Robert has been sweet on you since the moment he laid eyes on you. For those two weeks I wanted you gone, he did whatever it took to make sure you stayed, not because he thought you were a good worker or because of what would happen if you were dismissed, he did it because he was sweet on you. Did you even read the letter he wrote to you?"

"Letter?"

"Yes, letter."

Robert had written the letter. The letter I had kept in my pocket for a week or so, never having opened the envelop or looking at it unless I had to remove it from my dress pocket. With everything that had gone on, I didn't have the time to find out what had been written or who it had been written by. I had only ever seen Miss Jenkins and Doctor Ealing's handwriting, never Roberts, and if I had, I didn't remember it, or he had somehow disguised it so no one else knew he had written it. All this time I had been walking around with Robert's letter in my pocket, not knowing just how important it would be.

"If you still have it, I suggest you read it."

With that, Matilda turned on her heel and stalked out of the room and up the stairs. I tightened my grip on the edge of the desk and took a shaky breath as she went, suddenly realising how much my knee ached. I moved my leg slightly and the sound of rustling paper broke through the silence, reminding me that the letter had been so close all of the time and I had never even thought of reading it. My grip on the table tightened and reached into my pocket and pulled the letter out.

The envelope had been crinkled after spending so long in my pocket. Small lines marked the paper and the writing on the front had become almost illegible after spending so long in my pocket and being splashed by the smallest amount of water. The longer I stared at my name scrawled on the front of the envelope, the more obvious it became that it had been Robert's handwriting. The small loop he put on his 's' and the way the dot on his 'i' looked more like a line. The little things that I should have noticed when I was first given the letter.

I sighed to myself and tucked the letter back into my pocket, I couldn't read it now. Even though I had made my mind up regarding my position in the household, I knew Miss Jenkins was less than impressed with having me lurking around the kitchen rather than doing the work I was being paid to complete. Although I wanted to read the letter, to find out just what Robert had written all those weeks ago if Miss Jenkins caught me, I would be in a lot more trouble and I didn't want to disappoint her again. Instead, I resumed the work she had asked of me to complete before returning to the kitchen.

"What did Miss Matilda want?" Miss Jenkins asked when I stepped into view.

"She saw James and wondered why he was here, that's all," I replied. I rested the cane up against the side of the table and slid into the seat.

"You better be careful she doesn't go to her mother, the last thing you need is for Mrs Ealing to know your brother came to see you whilst you were working. She wasn't too keen on the days you went to the café with them after church, and those happened during your time off. You need to watch yourself and staying out of the way of the entire family might be your only way of doing so."

"I know, I know. I plan to keep my head down for the foreseeable future. There has been enough trouble over the past few days to last a lifetime."

"Glad to hear it." She paused. "Can you keep an eye on this for me? I need to find out what Mrs Ealing wants for next week's meals so I can check if we have everything we need. With everything that's gone on, I hadn't had the chance to get it done."

"Yes, of course. I'm not going anywhere in a hurry."

"I'd be surprised if you did." Miss Jenkins smiled at me slightly and snatched a sheet of paper and a pencil from one of the drawers before leaving the room.

I grabbed onto the handle of the cane and hobbled across the room to the stove where a large pot bubbled and boiled on the heat. There was a large wooden spoon on the counter which I grabbed and dropped into the bowl, stirring the contents whilst trying to avoid a face load of steam that drifted off the liquid. Miss Jenkins had spent the morning preparing a stew for the evening and although it was full of vegetables and there was mashed potato to go with it, it reminded me of the watered-down soup the foreman would give us for seven years. That had put me off soup or stew for life, as well as porridge. In any forms.

The stew continued to bubble as I slowly stirred the spoon around. The house was silent. For the first time in a long time, everything felt calm and I could take a breath and try to process all that happened in such a short space of time. In just a few weeks, I had been given two infractions, injured my shoulder and knee and suffered from a bout of influenza. So much had happened and this was the first time in amongst the chaos that I had time to myself and time to think. I had missed the silence.

Even though things looked as though they were starting to die down, at least a little in comparison to recent events, I knew leaving would be my only option if I wanted to stop the chaos from getting any worse. It would allow me to leave on my own terms, in my own way. Being forcibly being removed from the house reminded me all too much of the night the foreman chucked me out. I didn't get to say goodbye to anyone, and I didn't want that to happen again. Even after what I had said the previous day, I still cared about Robert and I didn't want to leave on bad terms. I wanted to have the opportunity to explain myself first.

Just how I planned to explain myself was still unknown. I would have to figure it out eventually, I just wasn't sure what I would say.

"How are we getting on here?" Miss Jenkins asked as she reappeared in the doorway.

"Fine, I think. I've never made a stew so I'm not entirely sure what fine would look like," I said, removing the spoon from the pot and placing it onto the counter.

"It doesn't smell like burning so I'd say it's fine." Miss Jenkins stepped into the room and tucked the slip of paper into her pocket and leaving the pencil on the table. "We really should have worked on your cooking skills earlier. If you had been down here and out of Mrs Ealing's way, you wouldn't have two infractions and be facing dismissal."

"Even if you had locked me down here, I still would have ended up the infractions. Mrs Ealing would probably have accused me of trying to poison everyone or something. She wasn't happy with the decision for me to stay so I doubt it would have mattered where I was."

"Even if that were true, which I highly doubt, why take six months to start handing out infractions?"

"Because Doctor Ealing managed to persuade her out of it. Either way, even keeping me hidden wouldn't have helped. We tried that with Mr Warrington, and I got slapped across the face."

"Don't go jumping to conclusions. The situation with Mr Warrington was different." She crossed the kitchen and peered into the pot on the stove. "Hm, this needs to be left on a low heat for a while and I have no chores for you, how would you like to learn how to make a Gingerbread cake? I have a trifle for upstairs, but I thought I could rustle something else for us."

"I have nothing else to do with my time," I said, smiling.

"Good. Give your hands a wash and we'll get started. You can lean against the counter if your knee starts to bother to you."

I turned to the side and removed the bandage from hand before washing them with the bar of carbolic soap whilst Miss Jenkins ran back and forth between the kitchen and the pantry to grab all of the ingredients needed for the gingerbread cake. Miss Jenkins had made it only once before and I had found it rather off at first, but after spending so long on such a limited diet, anything with an overload of spices tasted strange at first. Still, I was glad to be doing something even if my knee shook a little whilst I rested the cane up against the counter.

Miss Jenkins talked me through every step of the recipe, even allowing me to mix it with my hands rather than a spoon. In all the time I had known her, she had always been remarkably protective of her kitchen, unwilling to let me do anything on my own in case I did something wrong and accidentally poisoned someone. Yet she allowed me to do the mixing and measure out the ingredients on my own and be in control of what was going on for the first time since I had been apart of the household.

I couldn't help but wonder whether or not the recent events and the two infractions may have had something to do with it. Miss Jenkins hadn't been all too pleased about my knee injury, yet here she was being nice to me the day after I received another infraction. There was part of me that wondered if she was afraid of something, of Miss Ealing giving me the final infraction for something small or unworthy. As I watched her put the mixture into the tin and into the oven to cook, I almost told her I was planning on leaving there and then, but I didn't.

I struggled to find the words to tell her that I planned on leaving her and Esther in the lurch to be with my family. Despite all that may have happened, I still thought of the two of them as a branch of my family, much like the girls from the factory. Telling them would be devastating. I couldn't leave without telling them but telling them would be the hardest thing I would have to do in my entire time of being at the house.

James had given me a week to decide what I needed to do, but if I couldn't find the words within that time, I didn't know what I was going to do.

~~~

A/N - Chapter Thirty-Two is here! Good news folks, I finished writing TSG offline and there are 35 chapters so we have3 left!!! Ooooooo!!

Also, the image at the top is the cover for the new book! What do you think? Shoutout to Azanthiel for making it :D

Question time! Should Rosie come out and tell Miss Jenkins' she's leaving? Is Miss Jenkins right to think she was to blame for everything that happened? Also, Robert wrote the letter? But what does it say?

Comment below!

Dedication - This chapter is dedicated to VanessaJad2 who mass-voted on TFG and TSG! It means a lot :D

First Published - December 23rd, 2019