Excerpt from The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The mollies' rooms were hung with as much finery as Ma could arrange, all feathers and cushions and draperies. All of this was for the sake of the cullies—the minute you went up past the first landing or into the kitchen, why, the walls were bare lime-wash and the furnishings as plain as my mug. Ma charged a good rate, three or four shillings a time, so we were never short of misses willing to work. The cullies paid it, because Ma never would stand to see a cull robbed at the convent. There were houses like ours where a fellow had to keep an eye on his coat and boots, never mind his pocket-watch, but Ma wouldn't stomach it and all the neighbourhood knew it.

When I was perhaps ten and Dora twelve or thirteen, one of the misses—a smooth-skinned negress who'd shared a room with Gypsy Jane—was turned out for smiling her slow smile at one of the bullies once too often. Ma never could tolerate anyone else's pleasure if it didn't pay.

Dora and I were in the scullery. I was scraping the porridge pot and Dora was at the sink, trying to stretch half a bucket of water to clean all the dishes so that she needn't go back to the pump. All we heard was a squawk of raised voices, a scuffle, a cry, the slam of the door and then Ma, calling Dora's name. We looked at each other and I felt hot relief that it was my sister's name Ma called, not mine—I didn't know, when Dora swallowed hard and put down the bowl she was wiping, that it would be the last one she'd clean for a good while. I was left there amongst the dirty dishes to finish on my own. From then on, she'd help about as much as any of the girls, which was to say, as little as she could. Dora was to earn and I was left to be young by myself and so must be all the more helpful or all the more invisible.

Reprinted from The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman by arrangement with Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, Copyright © 2015 by Anna Freeman.