Then the shock of cold and wetness and a terrible burning as my first breath inflates the delicate tissue of my lungs. The next, I am being squeezed so tightly that my soft little ribs pop.

One minute I’m cocooned in a delicious warm, safe darkness, dreaming of nothing in particular. Most people don’t remember the moment of their birth. ‘Never felt a thing!’ Mum said, when Mrs Rice finally turned her attention back to the goings on between Mum’s legs and exclaimed out loud at the sight of me floundering around on the bloodied pages of the Evening Standard. It was a while before anyone saw me lying there, all goggle-eyed and gasping for air. Mum had insisted on taking the wireless into the bedroom with her when the first pains started, so of course it stood to reason that everyone else crowded in there too. The rest of them being my dad (Frank the Fish), Mrs Rice the midwife, my sister Norma and a motley collection of neighbours who’d come in to listen to Mr Churchill, because they didn’t have a wireless of their own. Even Mum missed my birth, she was so busy cheering along with the rest of them. Nobody saw me land on the newspapers that had been laid out under Mum’s bottom and across the mattress to protect it from stains. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.I was born above our fish and chip shop on Battersea Park Road, at the exact moment Winston Churchill came on the wireless to announce the war was over. Instead of freedom, is Alice in fact more trapped, alone and in danger than ever before? Prince ignites a passion in Alice that she never knew existed, and she dares to think she might be free at last.īut as Alice becomes more deeply drawn into the life of Prince's strange religious sect, secrets are revealed that seem to hint at a darker nature lurking behind the man's charm. She escapes to join the Agapemonites in their Abode of Love, where ex-Reverend Henry Prince rules his isolated colony of women as their Beloved. A constant disappointment to all but her doting father, she longs for the day that she might break free from the stifling atmosphere of her mother's rule.Īfter a chance encounter with a charming stranger, and a final incident with her family that sees her condemned to the madhouse, Alice sees her opportunity to run and grasps it with both hands. Escape from a bullying mother takes one young woman to an even more dangerous place.Īlice Angel has known only a life of rules, restriction and punishments as she strays from the rigid path of Victorian proprietary that her mother has set out for her.

The beloved by alison rattle