‘I want the Iremonger that got lost, the one from my dormitory, she can come with me. Yes, I’ll have her with me, thank you very much.’

Piggott’s hot face grinned, revealing her worn teeth. ‘Which Iremonger do you mean? Who is it you speak of?’

‘You know well enough, the one whose bed has been taken out, whose sheets and things have been burnt.’

‘I’m sure I don’t know who you mean, my dear. What evidence is there of this person you talk of, what proof?’

‘She sat beside me at meal times, she was my friend.’

‘Proof. Hard fact. Evidence.’

‘She had a name.’

‘Oh! She had a name did she? Was it, by any chance, could it perhaps have been –’ she said all this in a sickly sweet voice, but grated out the last word – ‘Iremonger?’

‘No, no, that wasn’t it,’ I said, ‘her name was Florence Balcombe!’

That did it. That did it all right. That took the wind out of her. She stood still, like a dummy, her jaw open, her eyes big and ugly, and she swayed a bit but was otherwise pretty much stopped. I wondered if she was broken like my parents. It was the butler’s time to help now, he came to the rescue of the housekeeper. She had a pouch-purse hanging from her belt, Mr Sturridge hurriedly opened it, and he pulled out a metal bottle – it had BRASS POLISH written upon its side – and he pulled out the stopper and waved it under the woman’s snout and she came to. Then the butler went behind her back, he untied something there, I thought he was undressing her, loosening her a bit so she could breathe, but what he was actually doing was unfastening a corset she had strapped to her back, beneath her apron, her own birth object, he gave it her and she breathed long and hard and she was back then, her head snapped forward, her face poisonous.

‘I throw you out,’ said the housekeeper, ‘you are so much rubbish to me now.’

‘Yes, Claar,’ said the butler, ‘that’s quite right, dump her.’

‘Oh yes, all right!’ I said. ‘Throw me out, shove me on the train, but I shan’t go without Florence.’

‘Florence? There is no Florence, I tell you!’

‘We don’t know of such a one.’

‘What have you done with Florence? She’ll come with me on the train. She will, you know.’

‘The train? Take the train?’ said Piggott. ‘There’s no leaving here. There’s no going away. This is not a place that people can come and go from as they please. This is no public house, run for your convenience.’

‘There is no leaving,’ said the butler. A statement, a fact.