There was another redheaded girl in the orphanage. She was cruel and stupid. That ruddy miss was of the opinion that there should only be the one girl with such hair in the place. We fought but no matter how I walloped her there never seemed to be an end of it. I knew given half a chance she should always come at me again, for the spite of it. She was that angry.

There then.

I think that’s all right. I think it is. I find it hard to remember, always harder. We never left the orphanage once we were in it, and those old bits of our lives grew so far away and the further away they grew the less we could be sure of them. But I think I’m right. I do think so.

I can’t remember what they look like any more, my own mother and father.

What else was there?

The next big thing.

A man arrived at the orphanage, particularly to see me. He said his name was Cusper Iremonger. ‘An Iremonger?’ I asked. ‘A proper?’ Yes, he said, an actual one of those. He had a golden bay leaf on his collar. It’s their symbol, I should probably explain, the symbol of the Iremonger business, the bay leaf to represent them, because they are powerful bailiffs among other things. This Cusper person said something about my mother’s family, about how her family was related to the Iremongers a while back, a long while back. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘so what am I then, an heiress?’ He told me that I wasn’t but he said there was work, should I want it, in a great mansion. By which he meant the great mansion.

I knew about the Iremongers of course, everyone did, everyone from Filching and all the other wheres beyond too, I suspect. They owned it pretty much. They owned the Great Heap. And they were bailiffs, had been for always, and it was said they owned all the debts of London and called on them when they had the itch for it. They were very wealthy. Odd people, cold people. Never trust an Iremonger, that’s what we always said in Filching, amongst ourselves. Shouldn’t say it to their faces. Lose our jobs for that. No question. I’d heard stories about their house far out in the heaps but I’d never seen it. Just a fat blot in the distance. But now I might. I was being offered employment. It was a chance for me to get away from the heapwork, to leave that leather cap behind, the only chance I was ever likely to get. I should be very glad, I said. Obliged of it. What a bit of luck. ‘I shan’t be married, then?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said, ‘not to the heaps.’

‘You’re on,’ I said.

‘Please to hurry.’