They say your life passes before you in these moments. Well, I’ve had quite a few of those but this was different. A sort of choking blackness and then my mind seemed to go … elsewhere. All I could think of was … the daisiest daisy …

*

When I came to, all I could see was a sort of vertical slit of light. I realised at last that it was the view through my own eyelid, gummed up with red stuff and very painful. I was lying in a heap with someone’s foot jammed against my cheek. I could just about make out the dippees (is that a word? Dippees? Not as good as ‘capacious’) who now stood like toy soldiers, stiff and immobile, their skin waxy and glowing faintly. Clara was among them – staring ahead, a rictus grin on her face.

Mrs Gillyflower strolled up and down before them like a general in a bustle, pleased as punch. ‘Like pretty maids all in a row!’ she enthused. ‘The process improves with every attempt! Mr Sweet is such a clever old thing.’

Mr Sweet again! Who was this silent partner of hers? Was he the brains behind the whole thing? These were the sort of questions that should have been raging through my brain had I not felt so completely poleaxed, paralysed and powerless.

Mrs Gillyflower turned a gimlet eye towards us, piled up as we were like logs in the corner. I think I was the only one still alive. Respiratory bypass, two hearts. You know the drill.

‘Into the canal with the rejects, Ada,’ she barked.

‘Yes, Mama.’

A new voice. And then, tapping its way over the cold floor on which my head rested, the tip of a white cane. I reached out a shaking, enfeebled red hand to the newcomer.

‘Mama—’ but the speaker cut herself off and bent down, her face coming close to mine, her gloved hands reaching towards me and detecting the signs of life. I didn’t know it then, but I had just met my saviour.

Chapter the Eighth

‘Through a Glass, Darkly’

Extract from the Phonographic record of Ada Gillyflower.

I was nine years old when it happened.

I have a confused recollection of being taken from my bed – head full of sleep – and pawing at my half-closed eyes. My little feet going down the steps to Mama’s laboratory – a journey I knew well. Then there was a loud noise – like a firework on Guy Fawkes Night – and then heat, terrible heat. And light. White. Bright, bright – and the last I would ever see.

But I also remember the light from before that. A kinder light. The light and the colour.