The first Easter Egg was made by Frys in Bristol in 1873, and was made of bitter dark chocolate with lots of marzipan decorations and piping. It would have been expensive and only available to the rich to give as a present. Cadbury’s in Birmingham launched their version 2 years later in 1875.

More common was a cardboard egg covered with satin and filled with easter presents and small chocolates, this is more likely to have been what Amelia would receive from her father and possibly her Aunt Cora. It was still a preserve of the middle and upper classes though. Easter was very much a celebration centred on the family so even Effie’s family would have had the chance to spend some time together and attend public celebrations to break the difficult time of going without in Lent.

Aunt Cora has been recovering well and has been a frequent visitor of Papa and I at our home – I do like saying home rather than house, it feels so much more permanent. Anyway on her last visit she told us that her doctor has advised her to ‘take the cure’ so as to restore her nerves or something. It did sound a bit silly, it is just water after all! Papa immediately suggested Bath but Aunt Cora exclaimed it was not the season for Bath and perhaps Cheltenham, or the newer resort at Leamington would be better. There was something about some Duchesses going to Leamington and that made it better, but I really was not listening properly as it was not anything particularly interesting to me.

Brighton...

Papa and I have recently returned from a few days at the seaside. It was recommended by the doctor to help me recover from everything that has gone on, so Papa decided we should go to Brighton. By Railway too! It was very exciting.

I know it is rather a childish pastime but I did love building a castle in the sand with my bucket and spade. We took lots of lovely promenades along the front and l made sure to go and look at the site where they say they will be starting on the new pier this year. Apparently it will be the grandest pier in England when it is finished but I find it hard to imagine them building something that goes so far out into the sea.

We took in the music from the popular Oompah band that was playing in the bandstand, although I thought it sounded really funny. There are so many music halls there as well. I wonder if Effie and Fleet will perform at one of them for the season next year? They do seem to be getting on well with the act and are nearly top of the bill!

Papa says we can come back again when the Pier is finished...

 

I may not really remember my mother, but my beloved father tells me that I am becoming more like her as I grow older.

She was brave, beautiful and wanted me to be educated and love books as much as she did. His description makes me miss her and think of her this mother's day.

This is her portrait and I keep it on my nightstand.

 

I’m so tired, yet still wide-awake in my head. It’s spinning like a kaleidoscope. A nosy, friendly girl called Effie, with a face like an apple, is going to be my maid. She talks non stop! She said I was like Miss Lovington – “all golden and pretty and stuck in a cage.” What a cheek!

She’s already taught me a rude song from the music hall. Her brother’s a performer. The bed feels strange but I must try to sleep. All I have to cling to is the knowledge that, in a few weeks time it’ll be my thirteenth birthday and I’ll inherit the Marchmont chest. Then I can try and find Papa and go back to school. Missing-feared-drowned does not mean dead.

My head is whirling. I just got back from the Christmas ball given by the strange twins at my dancing class. Maude and Agnes. Two girls fainted from their tight corsets and were dragged, quite roughly, to a small ante-room called a fainting room to recover on sofas, where their mamas fanned them and pushed them back out again to lose no time in attracting the men, even though they could barely breathe.

You have to have an eighteen inch waist to even be in the race to find a husband.

For supper, mid way through the dancing ,there were little birds jellied in aspic, towering blancmanges in rose and lavender, iced cakes ringed with Christmas roses and icicle shaped biscuits, cups of syllabubs and frosted bottles of champagne. Port-faced men forked mounds of roast beef and savouries onto their plates.

The girls in corsets could eat nothing at all. They sipped peach sorbets stoically from tiny iced spoons and eyed each other warily, worried they hadn’t many hours left in which to shine…

Please please may the Marchmont chest give me the freedom to escape all this.

Effie the nosy maid was sent up to my room tonight by Aunt Cora with some beauty preparations.

“We’ve got to start improving your terrible hands and face,” she said. “Mistress says they’re all rough from playing in the open air and we have to get you nice by Christmas, for all the parties.” She was smirking a bit.

I was furious but I didn’t want to give Effie the satisfaction of laughing at me as she applied a thick mixture of egg yolk, beaten egg white and glycerine all over my face and neck.

Then she covered my hands in a claggy mixture of porridge and castor oil and put mittens on them to sleep in. She tied my hair into dozens of curling rags so that it’d be curly in the morning.

I was seething. When I looked in the mirror I looked like a clownish, ghostly rag doll.

I don’t want to go to loathsome Christmas parties. I want to escape from this house and find my father.

Uncle Enoch was watching me in the hallway outside. His skin looks like wax. He says he expects his household to “run like clockwork”. Every time he speaks to me I shudder. I better hurry and dress for dinner...

I’ve arrived. Uncle Enoch’s house is on a grand crescent Uncle Enoch's House ...overlooking

Regent’s Park. My room’s pretty and Miss Lovington likes it, though there’s a stuffed fox, under a glass dome, next to her cage. Aunt Cora made me have tea with her in her hot parlour. She has a huge collection of pastel china shepherdesses and wants me to call her “mama,” which makes me feel sick. She said I “remind her of someone” but wouldn’t tell me who..

 

I was halfway down the staircase to the school dining- room when my life changed forever.Amelia's Blog P...

I was called into the headmistress’ study. When I saw her face I knew this wasn’t going to be a lecture about running in the corridors.

It was about my father: Fear sluiced through my bloodstream. The old fear, the worst fear. The nightmare I’ve always had since childhood.

I fixed my eyes on Miss Mapthorpe’s mouth: “Ship lost at sea… ..Sunk without trace...Missing feared drowned..So sorry, my dear..”

I couldn’t speak. The room softened to syrup around me. I came to on the carpet, roused by smelling salts, and was taken to the sanatorium.

So I didn’t need to worry about my Latin exam, or my feud with Perdita Mildbrace. School was over for me. My Aunt Cora and Uncle Enoch, two complete strangers, would be arriving to take me away. Away from school. Away to their house in London. I was twelve years old and had become...an orphan.

Through the thick glass of the window, I saw them step out of their carriage in the drizzling rain. Uncle Enoch was a gaunt, dark figure – so tall that he seemed to blot out the grey sky. On his arm teetered his tiny wife in foamy lilac frills.

Aunt Cora had ardently-parted pink lips. She clutched me to her small, perfumed bosom.

“You poor creature. We are going to love you so much. Love you...like our own. And we’ll have so much amusement together. We’ll get rid of this horrid, plain school dress and you won’t have to worry about learning...or anything nasty ever again.”

Aunt Cora stroked my plaits. I wanted to snarl and bite her hand. To sink my teeth into the white palm, like a rabid dog, until it streamed with blood.

“Thank you, Aunt Cora” I said.

My classmates peered through the carriage window as we drew away.  I hid my face from their pity, chanting inside my head. “Missing-feared-drowned does not mean dead. Missing-feared-drowned does not mean dead.”

My heart was a flint pebble as we left school behind, with my pet bird Miss Lovington trilling in her cage on my lap. The solid building, which had loomed so large in my life, shrank now to a tiny dolls-house as the carriage left the driveway and rumbled on towards London.

If I hold my breath for long enough, could I die?