At that, the chapel organ sprang – a bit wheezily – into life. It was ‘Jerusalem’ and each and every one of the congregation sang along with gusto as we surged forward to where the Pilgrims now stood, ready to sign up their eager new workforce. Mrs Gillyflower took her place at their head and, accompanied by a dolly blond boy Pilgrim, cast a beady eye over each name as it was scrawled in ink on the ledger. I watched her closely. Some people she smiled warmly towards and their names went in the right-hand column. Some – and I couldn’t help but notice they were the ones a little bit on the old side and one girl who was lame – went into the left. At last it was my turn. Mrs Gillyflower turned her gaze upon me and looked me up and down. I have to admit a sort of thrill went through me. There was a something about her. A kind of animal magnetism that it was hard to vouchsafe.

‘You wish to join us, my dear?’ she smiled.

‘If it’s all the same with you, Ma’am,’ I replied and my voice felt silly and quiet as if a mouse had squeaked.

‘Oh yes,’ she said and she smiled again. But it wasn’t a very nice smile. ‘You’ll do very nicely.’

‘Name?’ said the Pilgrim – all icy blue eyes and thick blond curls.

‘Jenny Flint,’ I replied.

He took up the dip and scratched my name – in the right-hand column.

I was in.

Deep within the bowels of the manufactory, gloomy and oppressive with heat and the dull throb of distant machinery, stood a spiral staircase, extending up and up into the eaves. On it, a white cane beat a tattoo – tap, tap, tap. Up the grilled metal stair on soft, kid-booted feet went Ada Gillyflower – tap, tap, tap – her blank white eyes darting from side to side. It was a route she knew well.

Tap, tap, tap went the cane. And the stair terminated at last at a green baize door, brass studded and with a curious hatch at its base, as though to allow ingress to a cat. Or perhaps some … other creature. Ada’s lace-gloved hand held a wooden bowl of grisly food – scraps not fit for a dog. Mutton bones and over-boiled potatoes swam in a puddle of gelatinous fat.

Ada’s hands fluttered over the hatch – and pushed the bowl through into the darkness beyond.

‘Did you think I’d forgotten you, dear Monster? Hm?’

She smiled fondly to herself then jumped back with a little cry as the door violently shook.

There was someone on the other side of that green baize door. Or something …

A hand – or was it a claw? – reached out from the hatch and grabbed the wooden bowl of slops. There was the clank of chains and, in the darkness of the room beyond, the faintest suggestion of a queer, crimson glow.