Excerpt from Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I thought it would go on forever, if I thought of it at all. Those words of Mammie's might lead to Paris, or Hackney, and we would pack up and go with them. But now it seemed that Mammie and I were both roosted, I because of my husband, and she because of me.

'You had better go home now, Lizzie. Hannah will walk with you.'

I felt a pang, as I did every time Mammie said 'home' and no longer meant the place where she was. I unwound my arms from her, sat up in the bed and smoothed my hair. 'I can perfectly well go without Hannah,' I said. 'She has enough to do here, with you ill in bed.'

'I'm not ill,' said Mammie again, and there was Hannah opening the bedroom door for me to go.

Birdcage Walk © 2017 by Helen Dunmore. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Atlantic Monthly Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved.