Louise Pirbright is a Universal Humanitarian Church member and the mother of Kevin, Becca and Emily. In an email from Kevin Pirbright to Sir Colin Edensor, Kevin recalls that Louise joined the Church when he was three and his sisters were six and eight. She married when she was young, but her husband left the family when Kevin was one. Kevin says that his mother was very pretty when she was younger. When she heard Jonathan Wace speak she fell in love with him and so she packed up their council house and took them all to Chapman Farm (Ch 7).

Kevin said family relationships were not acknowledged in the Church but they always knew Louise was their real mother.  She would do things like teach them their times table on the sly.  Mazu never liked Louise and always made sure she was given the worst jobs at the farm. As Kevin got older, he realised this was because Jonathan Wace and his mother were sleeping together. Kevin said that he, his mother and Lin Doherty were not allowed out of the Farm even to collect money as they didn’t fit the church’s image. Louise went grey early and looked a lot older than she was. When Kevin was planning to leave he spoke to Louise about it and wanted her to come with him but she was scared when he mentioned it and started shaking and chanting (Ch 7).

Robin meets Louise on her first day at Chapman Farm, sitting next to her in one of the crafting halls whilst they were stuffing toy turtles. Robin wonders why Louise’s head was shaved and notices her skin was weathered and chapped as if she spent a lot of time outdoors. Louise asked Robin a lot of questions to elicit personal information, as other church members were doing to other newcomers (Ch 24).

In the dining hall on her first evening Robin spots Louise again, who keeps glancing up to the top table at Jonathan Wace. Robin remembers what Kevin had said and wonders whether Louise could still be in love with Wace and whether it had been worth the loss of her son (Ch 27).

In the weeks that follow Robin notices the animosity between Emily and her sister Becca and notes that ‘the sisters seemed united in one thing only: disdain for the woman who’d brought them into the world’ (Ch 41).