We were asked where my missing friend was, who had last seen her, and one of the Iremongers said that she’d been worming in the ashrooms, that she had bits to haul there after being out in the heaps. More official men came in, city Iremongers with their dark suits and hats and all wearing the golden bay leaf upon their collars. They’d come from Bay Leaf House. They directed some serving boys to take her bed away, her stool, her spare clothes, all of it. As to where it went we heard clearly enough, ‘Incinerator.’ Shortly afterwards, another Iremonger came in and she had a mop and bucket and she scrubbed the floor where the Iremonger’s bed had been.

‘What’s going on?’ I whispered to the scrubber. ‘Where is she, do you know?’

‘Don’t know. Shut up. Not to talk.’

A little later an Iremonger boy came with some whitewashing and scrubbed the wall.

‘Do you know what’s going on?’ I asked him.

‘Not allowed to speak. Particular instructions not to.’

After he had gone a further Iremonger entered with a big metal tank on his back and a spray pump.

‘Close eyes!’ he bellowed.

He sprayed some liquid into the air, all over us and our beds, like it was raining in the room, and when we called out in protest, a city Iremonger swung around some hand crank, a klaxon, an enormous hideous sound, and commanded, ‘No talking! Silence! Silence during cleaning!’

And so we were sprayed. And stood there dripping, not just us and our clothes but our beds and the walls, everything sodden.

‘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.’