“I only have to remember who you are. And I’ve called you that all day. Mrs. Cook. Don’t fret so—you’ll make yourself ill!”

“Yes.” She smoothed the rug across her knees, felt its dampness.

The horse blew, shifting uncomfortably in the rain.

Finally the older woman squeezed her companion’s hand and said, “We must go in, Sarah. We’re expected. It must be nearly time.”

They climbed stiffly out of the carriage, two respectable young women looking as out of place here as they felt. The stench of bad sewers and boiled cabbage, overlaid with coal smoke and dirty streets, heavy in the dampness, seemed to wrap itself around them. A miasma of the city.

They made their way up to the door, stepping over old newsprint and brown sacking that had been turned to the consistency of porridge by the downpour. Lifting the latch, they could just see down a dark, awful tunnel that was only a rubbish-littered hallway but seemed like the final path to hell.

The door they were after was the second on the left, a barely discernible Number Three on a grimy card marking it. Someone shouted “Come!” to their tentative knock, and they found themselves in a bare, high-ceilinged room with a half-dozen broken-down chairs and no windows. It was cold with damp, smelled of cigars and stale beer, and to their fastidious eyes hadn’t been cleaned in years.

They could hear someone crying in the next room beyond a second door.

The older woman caught her friend’s hand and said, “F—Sarah—I’m going to be sick!”

“No, it’s only fright. Here, sit down.” She quickly found the best chair and brought it forward, then took another one for herself. It wobbled, one leg uneven.

A nondescript paint, peeled from the walls and ceiling, gave the floor a dappled look, and the old brown carpet in the center seemed to be woven of all the hopelessness that had been brought here.

The older of the two began to tremble. “I’m not frightened—I’m terrified!”

“It will be all right—wait and see.” It was a comforting lie, and they both recognized it for what it was.

They sat there for a time, not speaking, their hands gripped together, their faces blanched with the thought of what must lie ahead. The crying went on and on, and overhead there was the sound of furniture being shifted, first this way, then that, an endless screech that seemed half human, half demon. Somewhere in the hallway a man’s voice shouted, and they both jumped.

Watching the inner door, they could feel the minutes drag into the half hour. “Sarah” found herself wishing it would open, then dreading that it would. They’d been here a very long time—why had no one come out to speak to them? They had been expected at two sharp—

If only the crying would stop—