Lovely Miss Cora: The unconventional story of a girl who fights for herself and writes her own ending

By Grace May

Cora's 1890s Victorian life is going smoothly, she has money and a house of servants to help her, when her father dies and the family is forced to live on his inheritance, Cora is forced to cut back on everything herself. She is the nanny to the children, the cook, the breadwinner, and yet she is treated as an unpaid servant by the family, until she decides to take matters into her own hands.
Leaving her London home at seventeen, she is hopeful for a future when she is offered a place to stay by a friend. But things turn nasty and she is forced to flee in the night and she learns to think on her feet. She has only one motto in her life, 'I will survive'.
This "brilliant" and "refreshing" novella tells the inspiring tale of Lovely Miss Cora as she deals with what life throws at her and fights for herself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716682872

Book preview

Lovely Miss Cora

Chapter 1

17th November, 1889

I’m done! Cora told her painted mother.

It had been a long day and Cora was sick of it. Sam, Roy, and Amy had been utterly insufferable. Every day her mother insisted on this ridiculous pretence as if their father hadn’t died and his income rapidly ceased. She would always be a ‘lady’ even if it meant she disregarded her eldest daughter and treated her like little more than the nanny that the family had previously hired. Cora knew her mother would rather not have had her so young, she’d been a dancer at the music hall when she had found herself engaged and with a baby, practically overnight. Despite her career ending, her aspirations had lived on

So Cora was finished. All-day she balanced finances, even having to secretly mend clothing and sell jewelry just to afford necessities for her younger siblings, something her mother had vehemently forbidden when Cora had tentatively brought it up. But Eliza lived in her own world, a selfish, fictional world where Arthur lived on and their money felt infinite. Eliza no longer visited the expensive tailors and dressmakers to have the latest fashionable dress made and fitted, preferring a cheaper, more local woman, but that was where she started and stopped ‘living within their means’.

Cora had never felt loved by her mother and could count how many times Eliza had voluntarily embraced her. If anything, Eliza had become an enemy to Cora. She would become suspicious of everything, if Cora dared to sleep in later than her little brothers, who awoke at sunrise, Eliza would wake her up angrily, asking where she had been last night that made her so late to bed. She wouldn’t have been anywhere, after all, she had no money and only a handful of friends, but she was exhausted and needed more sleep.

Eliza was unwilling to forgo anything she wanted, so seventeen-year-old Cora had to make even more cutbacks herself. By now, she was used to wearing out of fashion clothing, without a corset, fan, or other fripperies, skipping meals so others could eat, and sleeping in a cold room to save precious coal.  She knew she was growing thinner every week and was tired, but she had no choice, there just wasn’t enough to go round.

Today had been the last straw, her mother had strolled through the door with more purchases, bringing her friends into the house for tea and cake. They had looked at her like she was a servant as her mother had said loudly, Cora, some cake and tea. To be fair, she looked nothing like she did as a child, when Eliza’s acquaintances would praise Eliza on her beautiful, bouncy daughter, with long golden hair and cornflower-blue eyes as she came into the room to speak with. Now her eyes were always on the floor, terrified of the repercussions of making eye contact with Eliza, and her thinning hair was pulled back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. She knew she had lost her attractive sparkle from her childhood. Nanny Lilly hadn’t been around long enough to teach wild Cora how to behave like a lady, so she truly felt like a servant, sent to fetch treats for the children and entertain the frivolities of the lady of the house, completely misunderstanding social cues to leave or enter a room or when to speak.

Straight after that mortifying experience, and trying to explain to her mother that they didn’t have cake, but they had biscuits, her siblings had started.

While she felt a duty towards them, Cora didn’t love them and the feelings were mutual. They followed their mother’s lead and saw her as their replacement nanny. Roy had initially claimed he was hungry. Cora was as well, but she knew that her first meal today would be the food leftover from their dinner tonight. She felt her stomach through her cheap, linsey-woolsey dress, thinned by her persistent hunger, and rubbed her hand in circles to ease the hunger pains. Roy had been fed, using up the last of the old bread. Then Sam had complained that he was bored and wanted to play, just as Amy had asked for water. Having been through this many times, Cora stopped massaging away her painful stomach and instead turned it all into a game. A smile was pasted onto her face as she made a game of racing down to the kitchen to fetch water. But today they wouldn’t play. Sam boldly claimed he wanted the other nanny back to play proper games and Amy began to cry. Tired, hungry, fed up, and cold, Cora had declared that she would be leaving soon and left the room, telling them to sort themselves out. None of them were younger than five, but they lacked the maturity and self-sufficiency she had instilled in herself. Aware that there were only a few jobs that would be open to her, she knew she had to face Eliza and start to do something, even if it meant working for a pittance.

So there she stood, her carpetbag stuffed with her few essential possessions. Eliza only looked down at her and coldly responded that she looked awful and should go to bed to rest and she would be over ‘this hysteria’. Cora hotly responded No, mother, I’m going. You can look after the children. I am not your unpaid servant. Goodbye! With a definitive thump, she closed the front door and strode towards a nearby townhouse. Please, please. Oh no, not now! Oh, dear! She thought as she began to stumble and sway, a wave of dizziness threatening to overcome her. The streetlamp wasn’t the support she needed, she held onto the cold, dark metal as best she could, but soon the world was black.

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