From the picture, she looked down at him with the ghost of a smile on her lips and he had to admit that Emmeline had indeed captured the essence of Jane: the power in her body, the challenge in her eyes and then this tremble on the edge of laughter about her mouth, this inability to resist teasing and mockery. But for all its accuracy – or perhaps because of it – he did not love the portrait. He especially did not like the object she held in her hands, a little ugly manikin, and couldn’t imagine why Jane had agreed to be pictured with this. He decided that if he was going to live with Jane as his wife in Tite Street, the vexing portrait would have to be hidden somewhere out of sight.

He looked at his watch, then consulted the long-case clock in the hall. It was almost three o’clock. At this hour in Bath, Jane would always be with her patients and it surprised him that she should be sleeping. He reasoned that perhaps her grief for Emmeline had exhausted her, but then it invaded him like a wave of sickness, the sudden certainty that she was not sleeping at all: she was with Julietta.

He couldn’t move.

If he thought of walking out of the house, to protect himself from seeing what he would not be able to bear, he dismissed this as only a prolongation of his agony. Instead, he turned at once and began running up the stairs. He knew his way, now, to Jane’s room. He did not go in, but stood outside it, listening. At first he could hear nothing and for a second dared to hope that he had been wrong and that Jane was asleep after all. But then they came, the unmistakable sounds of sexual exertion, accompanied by breathless murmurations and followed by a little passionate cry. It was a woman’s cry and the name she was repeating in her ecstasy was Jane’s.

Ross’s hand was on the door handle and he was a second away from turning it and opening the portal on the scene which had tortured him for what now seemed like some terrible eternity, but he knew that his agony was such that he would not be able to control himself. He would scream until his lungs burst. And then he would hurt Jane. He would have to hurt her. Violence was all that was left to him.

He ran back down the stairs, at headlong pitch, like a boy running for his life. In the hall, he collided with Nancy bringing the coffee. The bowl fell from the tray and smashed and the hot coffee spread, steaming, over the marble floor. Nancy’s legs were scalded and she cried out in pain, but Ross paid this no heed.

He rushed into the drawing room. He stood still for a moment, wondering what would serve him best in his intent, then snatched up the poker from the hearth.