It goes without saying that I could not have become a novelist without the love and support of my family: my parents Peter and Eileen; my daughters and their menfolk Grace and Toby, and Eliza and Kye; my mother-in-law, Sally and most of all my husband, Paul. I’m so lucky to live with the most enthusiastic, astute and encouraging reader that any writer could wish for. And if I’d let you read this book a bit sooner, my love, it might not have taken me twelve years to write it.
For more about my books go to www.carolynkirby.com
Reading Group Questions
1. What was your favourite moment in the novel?
2. Did you prefer the chapters told from Vee’s point of view, or from Ewa’s?
3. If you could ask Carolyn Kirby a question about this book, what would it be?
4. Did your understanding of the part played by women in World War Two change as a result of reading this book?
5. Conflicts about national identity are at the heart of this novel. How do the characters’ experience of a mixed cultural heritage compare with those of people today?
6. The role of female pilots in the Second World War was little known until recently. Why do you think there are still so few women working as pilots?
7. When did you begin to suspect the identity of the elderly woman who opens the novel?
8. Did your view of Stefan change when you found out what he had done at Katyn?
9. Do you think the experience of the character Beck is reflective of German people as a whole during the Second World War?
10. When We Fall explores the choices individuals make when pushed to their limits. Do you agree with the choices each character makes when they are most tested?
11. Why do you think the publishers chose the cover they did and what do you think of it?
12. What do you think might have happened to Vee, Ewa and Stefan if they had all survived into old age?
About the author
CAROLYN KIRBY is the author of The Conviction of Cora Burns which was longlisted for the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown Award.
Before becoming a full-time writer, Carolyn worked in social housing and as a teacher. She has two grown-up daughters and lives with her husband in Oxfordshire.
carolynkirby.com
@novelcarolyn
noexit.co.uk/CarolynKirby
If you enjoyed When We Fall, why not try Carolyn Kirby’s first novel, The Conviction of Cora Burns, available now.
The Conviction of Cora Burns
To believe in her future, she must uncover her past...
Birmingham, 1885.
Born in a gaol and raised in a workhouse, Cora Burns has always struggled to control the violence inside her.
Haunted by memories of a terrible crime, she seeks a new life working as a servant in the house of scientist Thomas Jerwood.
Here, Cora befriends a young girl, Violet, who seems to be the subject of a living experiment. But is Jerwood also secretly studying Cora…?
Read on for an exclusive excerpt of The Conviction of Cora Burns...
born
Here you come. I put down my hand and feel your little head between my legs. Your skull, cupped in my palm, swivels. Bone grinds against bone and I cry out, Lord help me! Although I am forbidden to speak, even now. They push me down on to all fours, hands and knees pressed on to the slimy newspaper that is spread over the boards. Black letters swirl into red as I strain and bellow through clamped teeth. My shift is pulled up so that it hangs around my neck like a dripping cheese muslin. Something inside me gives and your whole head pops through. Then the rest of you slides out of me in a hot, squirty rush. There’s rot and rust in the stone-damp air.
I collapse on to my side and reach out for you, warm and slippery with Lord knows what. Your face, swathed in lardy grease, glows white in the gaslight. Blood smears your tiny limbs. They start to wrap you in an old flannel rag and wipe the muck from your nostrils. They are too rough and I hear your voice. Good lungs on her, they say and smile. Not a thing I’ve seen them do before. They call me Mary and I wonder who that is.
I try to sit up but there is a mound of something under me that’s in the way. One of them gets the knife with its dull rusty blade. Someone should have cleaned it with brick dust. Their eyes are wary when they see me looking but how could I try anything in this state? They ask me what your name will be. I touch your cheek and smell the sweetest spot on your milky newborn head. Cora, I say. It seems right for you who came from the heart of me. Then they pull you away. The ugly one grabs at my belly, squeezing the doughy softness, feeling for something. Hold still, she says with a hard hand on my shoulder and a terrifying gleam in her eye, you aren’t quite finished yet.
prison stays
‘Hold still.’ The photographer looked up from his device but avoided Cora’s eye. ‘No. Stiller than that. For a count of four. And please do not blink.’
Did he think her made of metal? Glowering, she pressed her ribs against the prison stays. The camera gave off a gin-sharp whiff of ether.
‘Ready now?’ He twirled a scrap of grey hair around his middle finger then lifted the lens-flap. ‘One… Two…’
His fidgetiness was vexing. And it was a liberty to take her likeness just before release as if she was a habitual criminal. Meaning it to look like a mishap, Cora blinked.
The photographer’s stone-grey eyes locked on to hers, and then something in his countenance shifted. His face, less comical than Cora had supposed, seemed to whiten. It was as if he had seen, through his lens, the hidden awfulness of her crimes. Her stomach pitched.
‘Beg pardon, sir.’
‘Once more, then.’ His attention slid to the floor. ‘Stay on your mark.’
Cora’s clogs shuffled inside the chalk-drawn feet on the boards and again the photographer looked into the lens. It was a dry-plate camera; dark shiny wood and black leather bellows. Expensive. And he didn’t look much like a prison photographer; his coat was too clean.
He lifted the lens-flap and started to count but his voice this time was twitchy.
‘One…Two…’
In the corner, the stout wardress folded her arms into a threat. Window bars threw a black grid on to the glossy brown wall.
‘…Three… Four…’
The lens-flap squeaked shut and the photographer’s mouth formed a shape he must have intended to be a smile. As he bent to the equipment at his feet, he slipped a sideways glance at Cora.
‘And now I have some questions for you.’
‘What sort of questions?’
The wardress lunged, keys beating against skirts, and a finger jabbed between Cora’s shoulder blades, making her stumble forward. The photographer continued to rummage in his bag then placed a sheet of printed paper on the lid of the wooden travelling box. He took out a silver pencil, holding it up to the light to push an exact amount of lead from the point as he slid another look at Cora.
‘So, your name is Cora Burns?’
She shrugged and the wardress poked her in the arm. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty, sir.’
Something in his stance stiffened. ‘Do you know on which day you were born?’
‘July the twenty-ninth.’
‘I see, very good. Few know it so well.’
Of course she knew the date of her birth, but that wasn’t it.
‘Do you have a trade?’
‘Oakum picker.’
‘I meant before you were committed to this place.’
Cora knew perfectly well what he’d meant but the keenness of his curiosity seemed improper, even for a likeness-taker.
‘Laundry maid, sir.’
‘In a private house?’
‘No, sir. In the Borough Lunatic Asylum.’
There was no jerk of dista
ste, only a raised eyebrow. He bent forward to write, backside stuck up in the air and breeches ballooning over his felt gaiters. If her release hadn’t been so near, she’d have laughed out loud.
‘What, pray, has been the length of your sentence?’
‘Nine… nineteen months.’
‘And your crime?’
She’d guessed this was coming but the question still brought a flutter to her belly. A sudden vision of a bootlace in her hands choked the words in her throat.
The wardress glared. ‘Tell the gentleman!’
But the photographer waved a hand. ‘No matter, madam. I can find out soon enough. The girl’s reticence does her credit.’
Cora fought a tug of dizziness as she pictured him writing her offence on to his sheet of bond.
‘And your parents, what sort of people are they?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I never knew them.’
‘They are dead?’
‘I suppose.’
His fingers tapped a complicated rhythm on the travelling box and his high forehead creased. ‘So what else can you tell me of yourself?’
‘I was brought up under the Board of Guardians. In the Union workhouse.’
‘You were a foundling?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘How so?’
The silver pencil fluttered between his thumb and forefinger. Cora wondered, briefly, whether to lie but she’d a fancy to see his reaction to the truth.
‘My mother abandoned me here when I was not three months old.’
‘Here? At the gaol?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘At the gatehouse, do you mean?’
‘No, sir. She gave birth to me in her cell and when she departed from here left me behind.’
He stood straight now and unmoving. ‘So, your mother was a convict too?’
‘Yes.’
‘And her crime?’
‘I know only her name, sir. Mary.’
The photographer sprang forward to write.
Cora breathed out and pressed tight fists into the coarse apron across her stomach. She was glad that she would never know the answer to his last question for it was not impossible that the cause of her mother’s conviction had been the same as her own.
Get your copy of The Conviction of Cora Burns now!
Copyright
First published in 2020 by No Exit Press,
an imprint of Oldcastle Books Ltd,
Harpenden, UK
noexit.co.uk
© Carolyn Kirby 2020
The right of Carolyn Kirby to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of the publishers.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN
978-0-85730-395-0 (Demy)
978-0-85730-397-4 (B format)
978-0-85730-396-7 (epub)
Ebook by Avocet Typeset, Bideford, Devon, EX39 2BP
For more information about Crime Fiction please visit @crimetimeuk
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When We Fall Page 31
