Challenge was to write about a character we didn't feel like we personally know very well. Shoutout to my-little-yellowbird for coming up with it.


Amelie Benoit first came to England in the winter of 1946 as a young woman. She had smuggled her way into the country from Paris with no plans aside from an escape from her tyrannical older sister who evidently felt that as a newly married woman she had the right to control her little sisters life with an iron will. Amelie couldn't stand it.

Suddenly alone in a country recovering from a terrible war she had struggled to find her place in the world-she wanted to help those in need and yet none was willing to take on a near teenager on foreign blood with limited english and few skills.

By the winter of 1947 she was living in a hovel with no clean running water, no way to bathe and very little food. She never stayed in one pace too long-just long enough for the smell to overpower her before she'd move on to the next, forever praying that this one would smell nicer, would not be covered in excremement or would at least have a door to keep out the cold. It never was. Nobody spoke to each other at any of the places and she was soon lonely. Though she had now acquired a sufficient grasp of the language nobody would hire her as she looked like, as she had been told by many a shopkeeper, a drowned rat that would be better off dead then alive. She refused to allow herself to sell her body. The thought alone would give her nightmares of what her brother-in-law had done on his return from war. She never gave up trying to work.

June 1948 was when it all changed.

She had collapsed, her body finally giving in to the malnutrition, and had fallen outside of a church. When she awoke several days later she saw a kind round face peering down at her. The face identified herself as Sister Evangelina, a nun from the Order of St Raymond Nonnatus. Over the next few weeks the nuns and nurses of Nonnatus House along with Doctor Turner, the local GP, looked after her and soon Amelie begun to recover. Doctor Turner had diagnosed her as suffering from bronchitis, almost certainly a result of her having fallen in the river whilst attempting to bathe a month before, and had treated her at his own expense, all whilst explaining to her about the upcoming NHS. She made friends with the inhabitants quickly and, as she continued to recover, had begun to feel quite depressed at the thought that once she was prescribed fit and the nuns stopped force feeding her, she would be kicked out of the first place that had felt like home in almost a decade.

The new arrival had found a solution. Sister Bernadette was the same age as herself and the two had quickly formed a close bond though neither were sure it was quite proper for a nun to giggle like she did when they were together. Once she had been well enough to be allowed on her feet and investigate her temporary home she had pondered how to say thank you to the Nonnatuns for their help. She had decided upon baking them a cake, she been given a ration book when she had arrived and she saved up until she could afford enough ingredients to feed the mass of people. One bite into the almond sponge and Sister Bernadette had proposed a solution that was mutually beneficial to them. Nonnatus House needed a cook as their current one was due soon to move up north to look after an ailing grandfather. If Amelie could cook like this then the nun bet she could cook too if given the chance.

Two months later and Nonnatus waved away Mrs James and said hello to Miss Benoit. Or, as she would soon become known, Mrs B.