I hadn’t meant to do it at first, it wasn’t my purpose, I think the skillet would have been enough, but I didn’t have it any more, someone had taken it from me. I was looking for Clod but then there I was in a room with a different sleeping Iremonger, so I took, didn’t I, I just took, shoved it into my uniform pocket. When I opened those doors after, so quietly, so carefully, and seeing those heads that could not possibly belong to Clod, all sleeping, there beside the sleeping figures, upon all those nightstands, were things. Objects. Birth objects. I did not exactly mean to do it, not at first. Something incredible. Lucy Pennant, I said to myself, you’re a very bad one. Yes, so what? I went from bed to bed, collecting. I had four before I loved the idea, a tiepin, an eggcup, a noose, a darning mushroom. Then I had a passion for it. I stuffed them deep in my pockets, what a feeling, what a weight. They do things to you, these objects. I moved from room to room so quietly, so carefully, and I took the objects, one by one. All those sleeping Iremongers, so vulnerable in the night. One boy’s object I couldn’t find until I saw that he was wearing it, a woman’s shoe, that must be it, I thought, and it slipped off well enough. The storm was furious busy outside. Every now and again I should have to stop my lifting and wait in the darkness as something fell down one of the flues into a firegrate, just like I had, or outside the shutters rattled so much that the Iremonger in bed suddenly sat up and called out, ‘Who’s there?’

And I, so very close, my hand upon the night stand touching a particular thing, would see that Iremonger’s dozy hand come up, pat the object once or twice, seeking solace, finding solace, and go to sleep once more.