The pencil I was holding clattered to the desk and rolled onto the floor, the action went completely unnoticed by Doctor Ealing who unravelled the rest of the rag to expose the injury underneath. Robert however, glanced over from the cabinet for a brief second before flicking through the files and pulling one out. As he passed by me to give his father the file, he reached out and gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. He had noticed what Doctor Ealing hadn't and, in a way, I was grateful.

As Doctor Ealing exposed the injury beneath the rag, I took a moment to really look at the man that had been carried through the front door. He had dark brown, almost black hair that curled up in all sorts of angles and lay flat across his forehead and small ringlets. Sweat beaded around his eyebrows and ran down the side of his face as Doctor Ealing pressed a bandage against his hand. When he opened his eyes, they were a piercing ice blue, the same as my own. When I heard his name, I hadn't wanted it to be true. I didn't want to acknowledge that after all these years I was finally coming face to face with someone I had tried to forget.

"Rosie, can you grab me a bowl of water and some clean towels and cloth?" Doctor Ealing said, lifting the bandage up to inspect it once again.

"Of course," I said.

Snatching the pencil off the floor and dropping it back onto the table, I hurried out of the room and into the small room. After filling up a large bowl with water I grabbed several small towels and pieces of cloth from a shelf and carried them into the other room. I placed them down a small table that had been placed beside Doctor Ealing who muttered a small word of thanks and took the cloths and towels from me. As I walked away, I took the opportunity to get a closer look at Mr Matthew Greyson. His eyes watched me as I took a second to scan his face, noting the freckles that covered his face and the small scar above his eyebrow.

Whilst his eyes remained fixed on my movement, I crossed the room and stood next to Robert who was waiting for his father to say something. As I moved to stand beside him, he gave a small, reassuring smile but said nothing. Neither of us really wanted to discuss it, not with Doctor Ealing and the others in the room. Whether Doctor Ealing had made the connection remained to be seen, but there were more important things going on.

"I'm going to need the suture needle and thread sterilised with Carbolic Acid, Robert. There's a cut along the back of his hand that needs suturing and then we can address the bruising. I think it's going to be a rather substantial, so you may not have full use of your hand for a while. Once that goes down, everything should be fine."

"My boy's going to be devastated when I tell him I can't finish his treehouse. My brother even more so, it's in his garden," Mr Greyson said, laughing slightly.

"Maybe next time you'll move out the way when someone yells about a hammer," one of the other men said.

"I just thought someone needed a hammer. You need to be more specific."

As Mr Greyson and the other man engaged in a back and forth discussion over the right thing to yell when someone drops a hammer, Robert nudged me in the side and nodded his head towards one of the other cabinets. Nodding in response, I followed Robert towards the cabinet and watched as he grabbed a small needle and thread as well as a bottle of liquid. He took the needle and thread and dipped them into the bottle, keeping his fingers on the very tip of both objects so he didn't get the liquid on his hands. Despite the intense concentration on his face as he soaked the needle and thread, he was still able to do what he did best. Talk.

"You recognise him, don't you?" he muttered.

"I'm not sure. I didn't recognise him at first, but when they said his name I started to see the similarities," I mumbled.

"Matthew Greyson. A relative?"

"One of my brother's names is Matthew, but it can't be him. It's too much of a coincidence."

"Maybe. He does look a little like you."

"Robert! The suture needle?"

"Coming."

Robert put the stopped back into the bottle and placed it on the shelf before crossing the room and handing the needle and thread over to Doctor Ealing. He stood off to the side as Doctor Ealing started to suture the cut that dragged down the back of Mr Greyson's hand. Normally, I would flee the room the moment Doctor Ealing started any sort of procedure on someone who had been dragged to his office with his injury. However, there was something almost mesmerising about suturing, pulling two damaged pieces back together to form a whole.

It always amazed me how something as mundane as needle and thread was able to fix something broken and leave nothing more than a scar to show for it. It made me wonder whether fixing all problems would be that easy, though that was never going to be the case. Still, the simplicity of it all interested me greatly.

Whilst Doctor Ealing worked to suture the skin on the back of Mr Greyson's hand back together, I tried to pull my attention back to the list I had been making. As I worked through the various cupboards noting what we needed more of and we didn't, I could feel a pair of eyes on my back. They were watching my every move as I picked up jars and bottles, wrote down names and numbers on the paper and moved around the room. It didn't matter went or what I did, I could feel their eyes following me. It was unnerving, to say the least, but there was nothing I could have done to stop it. I was there to simply follow orders, nothing more, nothing less.

Finishing up the list, I placed it onto Doctor Ealing's desk to find when he needed it. There appeared to be a lot he was running short on, and it wasn't just the bandages. As I turned back to the others, I noticed that the eyes that it had been Mr Greyson who had been watching me, but I thought it was more a distraction from what Doctor Ealing was doing to his hand than anything else.

"You seem oddly familiar," he said. From across the room, Robert glanced at me out the corner of his eye, but he said nothing. Neither did I.

"I thought the same thing," one of the other men said, pausing for a moment. "You were in the paper! Not named, though. Your one of those kids from the factory!"

"Factory?" Mr Greyson narrowed his eyes at me.

"You know the one, it was in the paper about six months ago. It was being run illegally and was only discovered because of a fire set by the man who owned the place. One girl died, but they detailed the injuries of two others. A boy who had lost is his arm and a girl with a burn."

"Yes, yes, I remember. It's not that, though. It's something else."

"Rosie, why don't you take a break? There isn't much you can do here for the time being and I'm sure your friends would like to see you," Doctor Ealing said, raising an eyebrow at me.

"Yes, Sir."

Taking the opportunity, I left that room before anyone could say anything else. I stepped out onto the top step and closed the door behind me, taking a deep breath to try and calm my hands from shaking. Isabel and I used to talk about what we would do if we came face to face with our family, but those were just words. Actually doing it, seeing the man that I thought was my brother was a far more terrifying prospect. I always wondered what I would say if I ever saw my father again, but I never thought about my brothers, I didn't even know how much they knew. If I were to have that discussion with him, I needed to figure out what I was going to say.

I pulled my shawl tightly around my shoulders as I jogged down the steps and started through the London streets. I kept my eyes directed at the floor as I moved through the crowds of people, some turning to stare at me as I passed. All I had to do was keep my head down and ignore the stares that were continuously sent my way as I headed towards the girl's school where Suzanna and Lucy were. If I could make it there without having to deal with anyone, I could tell them everything. They were the only people I could trust to tell me what I needed to do next, how I needed to handle the situation. Robert tried, but he never really understood how difficult it was to adjust to life outside the factory, they did.

When I reached the school, I took the stairs at a jog and rang the bell that hung in front of the door. Turning my head towards the window, I noticed several younger girls gazing out of it before they were shooed away by one of the matrons on duty. After the closure of the factory, a decision had to be made on what would happen with the children who no longer had homes or places to go. The boys got apprenticed out to business whilst the girls were sent to the school in order to learn the proper manners and etiquette for a girl in service. Most of the girls left the school when they turned fourteen, but for Suzanna and Lucy, it meant they had become the two eldest. Neither of them enjoyed the idea of going into service, but they didn't have much of a choice.

After standing on the doorstep for several minutes, the cold wind biting the back of my neck, the door swung open and Matron Jesop stood in the doorway. Her hair was a little dishevelled and she looked a little out of breath but despite her state, she still gave me a warm smile.

"Hello, Rosie. You'll have to excuse my current state, we took in some younger children this morning and I'm having a hard time gathering them up into one place," she said.

"I can come back if you're too busy."

"No, no, it's fine. Suzanna and Lucy are on their recreation time at the moment so will be outside, though I may get Suzanna in to help me. Matron Wilson is off with the influenza and I need someone to help out."

"She's always been good with children."

"I've noticed. She may be better off here than going into service, especially at her age. That, however, is a conversation I need to have with her. You're welcome to come in, go straight through to the garden." Matron Jesop opened the door a little wider and gestured me inside.

Nodding a thank you, I passed over the threshold and into the building only to narrowly avoid being knocked over by several young girls as they went running past. Behind me, Matron Jessop sighed and shut the door before following the group in an attempt to get them into the main room. I made my way through the twisting corridors, dodging girls completing their chores or moving around the school to get to their next lesson. Eventually, I came to the backdoor that opened up onto a large green space with a pine tree in the far corner and several girls sitting around talking to one another. At the far end of the field, I spotted Lucy and Suzanna, both seeming to be in an intense discussion.

With them too wrapped up in their conversation to notice me, I started across the grass and towards. Weaving around the other girls who were spread out on the field, I crept up behind them both, their heads bent together with their backs facing the house. As I got closer to them, I reached out my hand and lightly dragged it across their backs, jumping back as Lucy flung her arm out and almost caught me in the leg. Suzanna shrieked slightly and glanced up in surprise, her face spreading out into a grin as she saw me.

"What are you doing here?" she exclaimed, pushing herself to a standing position and pulling me into a hug.

"I was working with Doctor Ealing, he said I could come and see you," I said.

"Wha' did you do?" Lucy asked.

"Nothing!"

"What's going on, Rosie? You're never normally allowed to just come and see us." Suzanne sunk back to the grass and patted the ground beside her.

"I think my brother was at the office." I dropped down onto the seat beside her, dropping my hands into my lap.

"How?"

"His name was Matthew Greyson, the same as my older brother. He looked exactly like him."

"Wha' did you say?

"Nothing. Doctor Ealing gave me permission to come here before he figured it out. I'll have to face him sooner or later, but not yet."

"What are you going to say to him?"

"I haven't gotten that far."

"Well, let's not think about that. We have a whole field to ourselves and I want to make some daisy chains before they all die."

Glad to have my two friends by my side, I joined them in collecting a handful of daisies and stringing them together to form a chain. It was a mundane task compared to the ones I would usually partake in back at the office, but it was a rather fun experience. There had been very few moments in my life where I had been able to just sit with my friends and have a little bit of fun. Although Doctor Ealing had tried to get us together more often, Mrs Ealing had a different idea so seeing my friends became rare, but very special moments. We had all gone through the same experiences, dealt with the same things and they knew how hard adjusting to life really was.

Facing my brother was something I knew I had to do, but I wasn't ready. Not yet. Having the opportunity to just sit with Suzanna and Lucy, to not have to think about the world around me was a welcomed relief. I liked to be busy, to spend most of the time doing something rather than sitting around doing nothing. It may not have been cleaning a bedpan or scrubbing a hallway, but it was something and it meant my mind was too focused on the intricacy of weaving the chain together to care. Every thought I had about my brother, or Mrs Ealing, or even the factory itself just faded away and allowed me to focus on something else.

As the afternoon started to fade, the light disappearing behind the pine tree and the gate that encompassed the garden, I knew I had to head back to the office, but I didn't want to leave my friends. I didn't want to step back into the real world and face up to what was going on outside. Being with my friends, being in that school reminded me of how cut off we were in the factory, how little we knew about the world and although I hated being there, I missed that ignorance.

"I should go before it gets dark," I said, attaching the two ends of my chain together to make a crown.

"We should probably go in as well, we were supposed to have a lesson this afternoon, but it looks as though Matron Jesop was too busy with the younger ones." Suzanna stood up and brushed the grass off her skirts before pulling me to my feet.

"Talk to your brother. Can't hurt to try," Lucy said, standing up.

"I suppose not."

"You'll be fine, it can't hurt to try, right?"

"We'll see."

"Come back and see us, we want to know everything."

"I will, you know I will."

"Good."

"Thank you for the distraction, see you soon."

"See you soon."

Suzanna gave me a reassuring smile as I tucked the daisy crown into my dress pocket and headed back towards the school. The building was a lot quieter then it had been when I first arrived, so I was able to get through it without being knocked over by a small, energetic child. When I stepped out of the house and started back towards, the London streets were almost empty as early evening set in. London was always so busy, but as the darkness descended the people retreated to the warmth of their homes and the warm fire and candlelight. I preferred it when it was quiet when there was no one around to watch me or stare at me because of the factory. Having no one around was a welcome relief.

Pulling my shawl around me, I quickened my pace as I approached the office and noticed the carriage waiting outside to collect us. Out of all the things that had already happened that day, I didn't want to add being late on top of that. Mrs Ealing was already against my going to the office, citing it as leaving my official post to stand around and do nothing. Making everyone late would only add to the grief she was determined to give me. After the fire and the revelation of the factory, she certainly wasn't my biggest fan.

Taking the steps two at a time, I swung open the door and made my way to the office where Doctor Ealing sat at his desk and Robert tidied up the storage cupboard. Neither of them looked up as I entered, and an uncomfortable silence filled the room. I stood in the doorway watching them, waiting to see if they were going to say anything or scold me for being late but they didn't say a word. So, I did.

"Sorry for being late, I lost track of time."

"You're not late, we've had patients through here for most of the afternoon, so we've been off our feet," Doctor Ealing said.

"I could have helped."

"You could have, but you needed to clear your head. I'd rather you leave your duties and have time to think then be here and make a mistake."

"I understand."

"Mr Greyson never made a connection to you, if there is one. Robert told me that you had a brother by the same name and that they look alike, but there is nothing to suggest the two of you are related. If you want to find out, you'll have to talk to him."

"I know."

"Whatever you want to do, we'll support you. If you want to see him again, we can help you with that and if you never want to see him or find out the truth we'll respect that. This decision is yours to make, it always will be."

That was what scared me. 

~~~

A/N - And we are back! I really need to be more prepared with these chapters because I am writing them on the day rather than in advance. Anyway, I managed to get the chapter done in time, it's still officially Tuesday xD

Anyway, what did you think of the chapteR? Do you think Matthew Greyson is Rosie's brother or is it a coincidence? Does he know who she is? Do you think Rosie should reach out or stay quiet?

Let me know in the comments below!

Dedication - This chapter is dedicated to originalverbivore who has been a beta reader for me over on The Factory Girl. Your help means so much to me, you've pointed out things I've never seen before and I owe you so much!

First Published - June 4th, 2019