I WOKE UP and immediately felt under my hard pillow, just in case I’d dreamed it. No, there it was – a small wrapped package that fitted neatly into the palm of my hand. I fingered the outline hidden inside the thick brown paper. It was hard to make sense of it. There was a triangle shape at one end, ridged in some kind of pattern. Then there were little bumps further down and a slightly bigger one in the middle. I couldn’t work out what on earth it could be.

I tried to edge my finger inside the brown paper, but it had been tightly wrapped and tied into place with string. I could just tear it off. I’d taken such a long time to fall asleep, tossing and turning, and slipping my hand under my pillow again and again, checking that my precious package was still there. But I’d slept eventually, probably for hours. It must be Christmas Day by now.

I so, so, so wanted to know what was in my parcel. But if I opened it now, I’d have nothing else to look forward to at Christmas. Somehow the waiting and the wondering were part of the whole joy of receiving a precious present.

One girl turned over in her narrow bed, murmuring something in her sleep. Several were breathing heavily, and someone was snoring like a pig. Sheila, definitely! I wished there was some way of waking her up so that she could listen to herself. She’d die of shame. She never believed it when I told her she snored. Her toadying friend Monica swore blind to Sheila that she didn’t snore, though she slept right next to her and her entire bed rattled with the noise.

There were no sighs, no whispers, no muffled sobs. Everyone was fast asleep. I thought of all the other sleeping souls in the Foundling Hospital. My little foster sister, Eliza, was down the other end of the corridor with the other small girls. My foster brother, Gideon, was right over in the other wing with the big boys. I ached when I thought of him, near but so far away. My second foster brother, Saul, was even further off, lying still and snoreless in a grave behind the chapel. Or perhaps great wings had burst through his nightshirt and carried him aloft up to Heaven. I hoped so – though when he was alive and we were all living in the country cottage with our dear foster mother and father, I’d frequently wished he’d go to the devil.

I went hot with shame now, though it was a very cold night and my blanket was thin. Matron Bottomly would only allow us one blanket each, even when there was snow on the ground and the pipes froze solid. I had glimpsed her bed once when I was called to her room. It had two big plump pillows and was piled high with quilts and blankets.

I pictured her now, lying on her back, her nightcap crooked, her mouth open and drooling. Perhaps she slept clasping her cane, ready, even in her dreams, to chastize any rebellious foundling. How I hated her! I’d always detested her, even more than Matron Pigface, who had ruled over us when we were new girls. When Matron Bottomly had banished Ida, my dearest mother, I hated her more than ever. It didn’t seem sinful to wish that she would go to the devil. She was so heartlessly evil, even the devil himself would surely shun her company.

Then I heard the chapel clock ring out: one, two, three, clear in the crisp night air.

It was so cold! I tucked my icy feet up inside my nightgown and tried hugging myself. If only I had someone else to hug me. When I was little, I climbed in beside Jem. He would grumble, half asleep, and say I should go back to my own bed, but then his strong arms would wrap themselves around me. He’d rub his chin on my wild red hair, and I felt so comforted I fell asleep in an instant.

After I discovered that Ida was my real mama, I stole away to her kitchen as often as I dared, and if we could be sure of being quite alone, she would sit on the bench and pat her lap, and I’d climb on and nestle there like a baby, even though I was growing up fast. I was still small and slight, though, and hopefully didn’t squash Mama too much.

‘You’re light as a fairy, my little Hetty,’ she’d murmur. ‘I can’t get enough cuddles with you. All those ten lonely years when I had to make do without any opportunity. Oh, it was so hard.’

It’s even harder now, because I know she’s my mother and we love each other so much. She would still be working in the kitchen at the Foundling Hospital if it wasn’t for Sheila spying on us, and Matron Bottomly sending Mama packing. She said she was wicked and deceitful, and when Mama cried out that she’d only lied because she loved me so and needed to be near me, Matron Bottomly called her a fallen woman who had no right to her child because I’d been born in sin.

‘All right, punish me if you must – but why deny Hetty a mother’s love? She’s just an innocent child. She can’t help being born out of wedlock,’ Mama protested bravely.

‘Hetty Feather is a red-haired child of Satan, a wilful imp who needs to be shamed and tamed,’ Matron Bottomly said.

Well, she’s done enough shaming and taming me these past eighteen months to last me a lifetime, but I have a fiery spirit to match my fiery hair and she’ll never, ever, ever change the way I feel.

She’ll never change Mama, either. She has to work as a maid hundreds of miles away and we can’t see each other any more, but Miss Smith acts as our secret postman. Mama sends short letters because writing doesn’t come easily to her, but even if the messages are brief – Deerest Hetty, I love love love you and miss you horibbly your own Mama – they are more beautiful to me than any Shakespearean sonnet.

I’ve kept every letter, folding them again and again and tying them with ribbon. I roll the sweetest messages up in tiny spills and post them into my pillow. I imagine them whispering words of love in my ears as I sleep.

I write long letters back, printing in big letters so that Mama can read each word easily. Miss Smith gives me notepaper, but sometimes I run out and have to tear pages out of my journal. Miss Smith bought that for me too. She has been such a dear friend to me, a true fairy godmother.

I couldn’t help smiling into the darkness at the thought of Miss Smith dressed in flouncy taffeta, with wings and a wand. In reality, she is a stout, white-haired lady with a long horse’s face. However much I care about her, I could never call her pretty or even handsome. But she is good and kind and she has been so, so generous to me.

Now that she has become a governor of the Foundling Hospital, I see her quite often. She paid a special visit yesterday, Christmas Eve, accompanied by a sturdy lad carrying a great trunk that rattled deafeningly. They had been to the bank to collect the Christmas pennies for all the foundlings. She left the lad recovering in the kitchen with a glass of something strong and said she might as well make a quick inspection of the premises while she was here.

I’m sure that request set Matron Bottomly all a-quiver. Years ago we older foundlings had discovered that she sells off half the food and most of the wool and linen sent to feed and clothe us. I dare say she’d like to get her hands on our coppers too.

She steered Miss Smith around cautiously, glaring at us all as we darned, sighing over our socks.

‘It’s practical for the girls to learn to darn neatly, but it’s such repetitive work,’ Miss Smith said. ‘Perhaps we could leave the darning to the little ones, and see if the older girls can tackle some proper sewing. If I had some fine linen and white embroidery silks sent to the hospital, they could make themselves some attractive undergarments.’

Our heads jerked up in surprise, and there were several pricked fingers. We’d never, ever been given undergarments! Our stiff brown frocks chafed against our bare skin. We barely knew what undergarments looked like, though I had a dim memory of my older foster sisters dancing about the moonlit bedroom in their white chemises and lace-trimmed drawers.

‘That’s a very interesting idea, Miss Smith, but embroidered undergarments would not be appropriate for our girls,’ said Matron Bottomly, tight-lipped. ‘They are being trained for service.’

‘Well, I will bring the matter up at the next board meeting,’ said Miss Smith smoothly. ‘Now, let me inspect these socks. Dear me, some seem to be more darns than wool!’

She wandered around, peering at each girl’s work. When Matron Bottomly tutted over Slow Freda’s huge stitches, Miss Smith took the small brown parcel out of her carpet bag and dropped it in my lap.

‘From Ida!’ she mouthed.

I had tucked it down the front of my dress in an instant. There was plenty of room as I still have no chest to speak of, though a few of the girls my age are starting to look quite womanly. Sheila is as flat as me, but when we go to chapel on a Sunday and parade past the boys, she looks quite shapely. She wears her socks rolled up inside her dress instead of on her feet!

For the rest of the day I walked with my stomach sticking out so that the precious parcel wouldn’t work its way down and shoot right out from under my skirts. While we were saying our prayers at bedtime, I hid it under my pillow in a flash – and here it was now, tight in my hand.

I thought of Mama’s hands carefully wrapping it in the paper and tying it with string. I mimed the motions, picturing it so vividly it was almost like holding her real work-worn hands and small nimble fingers. I thought of all the time we could have spent together but had been denied. I still had another two wretched years at the Foundling Hospital before it was time for me to leave, and even then I wouldn’t be free to find her. All foundling girls had to seek employment as servants, living in someone else’s house, at their beck and call from dawn till dusk.

I could only hope that Miss Smith might find me a position near Mama so that we might see each other for a stolen hour or two each week. It needn’t be in the same town. I would walk ten miles to see my mama, even twenty. I would walk until my feet were one big blister so long as I could have five minutes in her arms.

The longing for her was so strong that I had to close my eyes tight to stop my tears rolling sideways and dampening my pillow. I turned on my side, parcel held as carefully as a rescued fledgling, and tried hard to get back to sleep. I sang inside my head to soothe myself.

All week we’d been practising Christmas carols for today’s service in the chapel. I worked my way through the repertoire, thinking of all those mild mothers and blessed infants in their lowly stable refuge, turned away by decent folk. All the foundlings had been born in similar secret circumstances. Our mothers probably loved us just as much as Mary loved the infant Jesus. Certainly Mama had loved me like that. But she couldn’t find a job where she was allowed to keep me with her, and she had no husband to support us. She had to give me up. We’d all been handed in to the hospital and our mothers had stumbled away weeping while, in Matron’s cold arms, we bawled too. I hoped I’d wet right through my napkin and stained her starched white apron.