‘Well, well, well, it would seem that my sister is not the only firebrand at my table. What do you say to that, Tom?’

Captain Mandeville sat back in his chair so that the two front legs hovered off the floor. ‘I say that if the suffragettes who torched the refreshment pavilion are in need of reinforcement, then they need look no further than your dining table, Father.’ He gave Lou a sidewise glance and smiled before tucking into another mouthful of beef.

Lou fell silent, mortified that she had gone too far. They must all think she was mad. For the remainder of the meal, she studied the pattern on each plate placed before her, while Lady Mandeville steered the conversation to the safer topic of the trip she had planned for the next day to visit a friend with Charlotte and Mrs Hart. When Lou looked up and caught Sir Charles’ eye, he raised his glass to her and smiled. At the end of the meal, when the women stood to make their way through to the drawing room, leaving the men to their whisky and cigars, Sir Charles called out to Lou.

‘Miss Arnold, won’t you stay with us to take a drink? You might find the conversation with the men more to your taste.’

Sir Charles was mocking her, but she could hardly be rude to her host again. ‘No, thank you,’ she said.

After coffee, she was finally free to return to her room. Sally appeared to help her undress and prepare for bed. That night, a woman down in the kitchen would wash the dishes from her dinner, tomorrow, another woman would wash her underwear and another woman would come in to clean her room. If she bumped into any of them, they would be expected to turn to face the wall, pretending they were invisible. If she allowed that, what kind of feminist did that make her? The kind that settled for working in a supermarket, rather than pursuing her dream to become a teacher. There was nothing wrong with working in a supermarket, what was wrong was that she had managed to convince herself that debts were the obstacle preventing her from becoming a teacher. In truth, she was a coward. It would take courage to pursue her ambitions – not the courage required to set fire to a building and go to prison in the fight for what she believed in or to work fifteen hours a day just to keep a roof over her head – but courage nonetheless.

When Sally left, Lou opened the curtains. She lay in bed staring up at the stars, sharp as pinpricks in the dark night sky. The courage she would need to find when she woke up and returned to her own life was nothing compared to the courage each member of this family would need to face the next few years. She pulled the blankets up to her chin. If only Captain Mandeville would listen to his mother and leave the army, then the future of his family could be so very different. Couldn’t he see that they all needed him to do that one simple thing? Of course, he couldn’t, because this was a dream, and, just like her own life, this was the shadow of a reality already set.