I was so busy with my learning, which took up most of my first morning there, and was always timed: ‘You could be faster,’ the underbutler Mr Briggs insisted, ‘Iremonger, faster still,’ so that there were many moments when I forgot myself and became only one of the people who laid the fireplaces and no one else, and an hour might pass before I remembered who I was before I came to Iremonger Park and that I once had a father and mother. When I worked, more and more, I found myself thinking of that matchbox in Mrs Piggott’s room. I found myself yearning for it. Such a fuss over a matchbox, I told myself, pull yourself together. When I go upstairs, I told myself, into the greater part of the house, I shall be alone then and then I shall whisper to myself everything about me, over and over again, and so doing keep myself to myself and not let me go. I shall keep my brain busy, I must stray off their rules a bit, I shall go about exploring, I shall go places I am not supposed to, I shall creep into rooms, I shall do all that. I am Lucy Pennant, that’s who I am and there’s no call to fuss over matchboxes.

At lunchtime, towards the end of the meal, Mr Briggs came up to me, he had kept his eye on me all day, and he asked me why I wasn’t having my spoonful.

‘City dirt, is it, sir?’ I said. ‘I don’t really want it.’

‘City dirt?’ he repeated. ‘Who said that? It’s sugar and spices, expensive stuff that we’re very privileged to have, it’ll keep you strong and stop you from getting ill, but tastes something marvellous. Try it.’

‘No thank you, sir,’ I said, ‘rather not.’

‘Try it,’ he said.

‘I’m not hungry,’ I said.

‘Try it now, Iremonger, or I shall be forced to get someone to really encourage you. It’s very important you eat it, it’ll keep you well.’

‘Really, sir, I don’t want it.’

‘Want? Want? What have you to do with want? You’re a serving Iremonger, it’s them upstairs that can have wants. Take a bite now or I shall have to shove it in your mouth myself, and I’ll ram it down and I wouldn’t want to hurt but I’m not always so exacting. Just a taste,’ he said, ‘now.’

And so I raised the thing to my mouth and took the tiniest crumb of it into my mouth. And it was sweet and warming somehow. And felt, a little, like kindness.

‘Swallow,’ he said.

And I did, and I felt happier then than I had in a long while.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘what do you think?’

‘I like it,’ I said.

‘I knew you would,’ he said, grinning, ‘I just knew it!’