She took the necklace first to a pawnbroker. This elderly person applied a cup-shaped object to his eye and gazed at the rubies through it. Clorinda Morrissey, watching him with her sharp gaze, saw a tiny froth of saliva escape from his mouth and dribble down his chin. She deduced correctly from this that the man had at once understood that, among the dross of gilt, brass, glass, ivory and pewter habitually offered to him, here at last was a thing of uncommon beauty and value. He laid the cup aside, wiped his lips with a limp handkerchief, cleared his throat and made Clorinda an offer.

But it would not do. Mrs Morrissey was intent on changing her life. She knew that what was being proposed, although more than she could earn in six months at the milliner’s, was miserly. A violent hatred towards the cynical pawnbroker surged up in her breast, a loathing as red and heartless as the jewels themselves. She didn’t argue with the despicable man. She snatched up the necklace, replaced it in its box and prepared to walk out of the shop without another word. As she got to the door, she heard the pawnbroker call her back, raising his offer by a fraction, but she kept going.

The following day, she paid sixpence to borrow a fancy bonnet from the milliner, arranged her hair carefully beneath it, put on her best coat and clean shoes and marched into a high society jeweller’s on Camden Street. Her entrance into this shop set ringing a little melodic bell above the door, and she took this for a sign of welcome.

The money Clorinda Morrissey obtained for the rubies, paid in gold sovereigns, signed for on an embossed Bill of Sale with as much flourish as she was able to muster, put her into a trance of what she called ‘pure purpose’. She did not sleep. She sewed the sovereigns into the hem of a cambric petticoat. She chose to believe that her thirty-eight years of life had been lived in a kind of semi-darkness, but that now she would journey towards the light. And she knew exactly where she wanted that light to fall.

Further down Camden Street there was an empty shop premises. It had formerly been a funeral parlour which, Clorinda was told, had gone out of business ‘due to insufficient deaths in the city’. It was explained to her that although Bath had a very high population of sick and suffering people, these were mainly ‘imports to the town’ who came hoping to be cured by the healing waters and who were indeed cured – or else went back to their homes to die. Bath’s indigenous population was extremely long-lived. The steep hills around the city kept the people’s hearts beating strongly. The air they breathed – at least in the upper part of the city – was very pure, compared to London and many other cities. Entertainments of all kinds kept them from despair. Reasons for dying were comparatively few.