The Foundling School for Girls by Elizabeth Gill

When Dinah's mother walks out on Christmas Eve, her father - drunk as usual, and thinking she is her mother - forces himself on her. Finding herself pregnant, she runs away and is taken into the care of a group of nuns.

Sister Madeline Armstrong and three others have been tasked with setting up a school to help the lost girls of south west Durham, and so Dinah becomes the first student of 'The Foundling School for Girls'.

Together, the sisters bring aid to the orphans they take in, but when former street-child Jay returns to Newcastle, Maddy is suddenly torn between the love of her life and her calling to help the children...