‘Now, ladies, it is no matter,’ said the city Iremonger, ‘all this spraying, no matter at all. Just precaution. No alarm please. For your safety. Please now, to stand and slowly to dry by air, all is well. And please, a favour to ask of you. Please to shuffle the beds together and fill in this gap here. It looks, don’t you think, somehow out of place.’ He had us move the beds so that very soon it was as if it had never been there at all. ‘So good! So good! Breathe in!’

‘Excuse me, sir,’ I said.

‘What?’ said the Iremonger. ‘What is your point?’

‘I clean the firegrates, sir, upstairs in the night.’

‘And?’

‘The Iremonger,’ I said, ‘who used to sleep here, where is she?’

‘Why, why care?’ He looked so interested now, he took a notebook from a pocket, muttered ‘firegrates.’

Look out, I told myself, these men in their black suits will surely do whatever they want with a person, throw them into the heaps without so much as thinking about it.

‘She … she,’ I said, ‘took a handkerchief from me, borrowed one. I should like it back.’

‘Can’t!’ he said. ‘Handkerchief’s gone.’

‘Is she well?’

‘She is missing, suspected lost in heaps.’

‘But she was in the ashrooms. She was worming. She’d come in already. She can’t have been out in the heaps.’

‘What is your purpose?’

‘I clean the grates, upstairs, sir, as I said.’

‘Well then, not to worry, are you? Nothing to do with you, is it? You shall be reimbursed: one handkerchief. And now, all present, wait please, a while longer. In silence is best.’

He left.

‘You wouldn’t ask about her,’ I whispered to those others in the dormitory. ‘She’s gone, and you didn’t lift a finger. You just stand there. You just do whatever you’re told.’

‘And how brave were you, Iremonger?’ said my neighbour.

‘Can’t recall you doing so very much,’ said another.

‘I asked, I did ask,’ I said.

‘Didn’t look like much from here.’

‘Didn’t look like much of anything.’

‘No, not very much,’ I admitted.

‘No, I should say not.’

‘But I will find her, I will find out what’s happened.’

‘Hark at the hero.’

‘I will,’ I said, ‘I will.’

‘You’ll clean the firegrates and shut up, that’s what you will.’

‘I won’t let her fade away. I have friends, upstairs.’

That set them cackling.

‘I do! Just you wait!’

More cackling.

‘What a fuss she makes!’ said one.

‘And is it worth it?’ wondered another.

‘All the fuss over a heap.’

‘Come on, Iremonger, what nonsense over nothing.’

‘You’re a firegrate, that’s something to hold onto,’ one said, and in a kinder voice, ‘and we do so like to hear your stories.’

‘Can you even remember her?’ another asked gently.

‘Of course I can.’

‘Can you tell us what she looked like?’

‘She wore a black dress and a white cap, and there were clogs on her feet,’ I said, doing my best.