This book and the narrator is quite frightening. Winifred becomes close to Mr Pound, who invites to walk almost every day, which is not agreeable to Mrs Pound.
Winifred remembers her past. For a while she was at a foster home where the woman was cruelly to babies and they even died, but she survived. When her mother married the reverend, she was sent to a school, and that ended badly. Winifred saw a blackbird drop from a tree out of the window of a classroom. Then that night she sneaked out of the dormitory and grabbed teh bird, which she hugged. And then after some days she put the rotten bi rd, hidden in a dish, which all the other girls died and beame sick. She was expelled because as she was the only one who did not get sick, they assumed that it had been her doing.
Another terrible event happened when she was older and her mother had died. She was at home alone, and a man knocked at the door, and when she opened, the man attacked her, biting her arm savagely. She realised then that she had a peculiarity: she felt no fear. Somehow she managed to escape the man and she ptached herself up.
We know that Winifred's mother got pregnant out of wedlock, and she kept a letter from Winifred's father. From something she has said, I think that Winifred's father is Mr Pound, and I dread what she has planned.
The Pounds bring a painter to draw Mrs Pound's likeness, and the man seems to be drawn to Drusilla. When Mrs Pound discovers that Drusilla has love letters from the painter, she throws a casket and dismisses the painter and punishes Drusilla. Winifred wonders if the girl may be pregnant, and if that is the case, what will happen because she remembers how in a previous house she worked in, the mother put her daughter's baby in the fire. he woman was arrested when it was found out.
Winifred almost kills Drew when she makes him stand near a wild horse in the stables, but he is just hit lightly. Then Mrs Pound tells her that her work is not satisfactory so they won't need her any longer, but she will not leave until after Christmas.
Then something terrible happens. Mrs Pound invites some friends to tea, and one of them has a baby. Mrs Pound tells Winifred to take the baby to the nursery. The baby is crying, and then Winifred kills him by cutting his throat. She panics, and then she runs out of the house, ending up at a farmhouse where she finds a baby of similar age. Then she grabs the farmer's boy and in the nursery she dresses the baby in the dead boy's clothes. When she returns the baby to his mother, the woman doesn't even look at him.Then she puts the dead baby in a box and sends him to a convent. Now Winifred wonders whether Drusilla may have seen something.
This is definitely an uncomfortable book, and I wouldn't have chosen it if it wasn't the book chosen for my book club.
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