Page 7 - Homestead By Ann Newhouse

enjoy passing on bits of knowledge when we were alone. I now realise that she would have been quite an educated woman; then my father came along!
We rarely saw anyone else at the shack. An odd stranger passing by would stop to ask directions or for a drink of water. Twice I remember respectable looking men in suits calling, but I was sent to my room and told to be quiet. Looking back, I am sure my birth was never registered, and nobody really knew I existed.
My mother made me promise that when she died, I was to leave immediately. Never to tell anyone about what went on in the house or to trust anyone from the town. She showed me her secret cubbyhole. A gap in the wall at the back of an old wardrobe, covered by a large piece of wood. Inside it contained a tatty rucksack.
“This is for you. . . you have to take it when you go,” she whispered.