Emmeline, whose habit of taking laudanum was growing more acute than she knew was wise, had snatched a sip from her jar and had then begun to pace about the room. Jane’s intelligent brown eyes had watched her quietly and patiently. Emmeline passed a hand across her brow and, after describing her attempts to make a bowl while a thunderstorm raged over Chelsea, began to narrate the events which happened next.

‘They all happened in the space of not much more than an hour,’ she said. ‘And yet they have lasted a lifetime in my mind. I think I will remember them, still, when I am very old.’

‘Oh,’ said Jane, ‘I have done nothing yet which I will remember when I am very old, but I am determined to remedy that.’

‘You will, Jane. Your life is going to be a rare thing. We all know it. Your father even fears for you.’

‘Does he? Well, that cannot be helped. But let us not move from your story towards my future. I am dying of impatience to hear what happened …’

‘Well, this was the order of it. The storm raged on, and I stood back and let the rain fall. I watched as, drop by drop, the water leaking from the glass skylight began to pock the clay, so that, very slowly it began to be flattened by the persistence of the water. What had been round and full fell in upon itself, like a balloon emptied of air.’

‘You let the rain transform it?’

‘Yes. I wished for the rain to transform it. And what I saw, as the thing collapsed – or some would say, what I chose to see, was that what I had inadvertently made was a model of my own womb. It was not heavy with life any more. It was flat and empty. And the poor embryos of children who had yearned to be brought to human life within it … where were they? They had seeped away through the womb’s neck. They had vanished into the storm!’

‘Oh,’ said Jane. ‘Oh.’

‘But this idea engendered a kind of wildness in me. You could say that I was enthralled. I saw some other hand at work than mine. I waited until the “womb” lay flat and shapeless on the wheel, then I hurled myself on it and took up the soaking clay and began, on my work table, to squeeze some of the water from it and to dry it with a cloth.

‘Then from this same lump of matter, I began to sculpt a figure. I wanted it to be beautiful, as I believed a living child of mine would be beautiful. I had many times done drawings and portraits of young children and babies. I knew how to arrange human features into a pleasing aspect. But I could not do it with the clay! The thing I made was a little stooped homunculus, a kind of miniature golem.’

‘Could you not alter it? Knead it and pummel it and begin again?’