– Over here is the lady’s room.

A real four-poster bed. Carved tables. Thick curtains. A fancy armchair with winged legs so it can fly away! These rooms are huge! Highest ceilings I’ve ever seen.

– Is it Jessie?

– Aye.

– He takes his clients in the other room, the consulting room. He does all of his work and socialising in there, he sleeps there as well.

This is nothing like our two-room croft at home. Our place had sheep in there with us when it was freezing, which it was, every winter. She takes me back to the kitchen. There is a wooden butcher’s block in the centre of the room. A scrubbed table in the corner. An old range cooker emanates warmth. Herbs hang on a rack. Heavy iron pans sway on hooks. There is a real copper pantry – fitted out to keep every bit of bread or cheese, cool as a shelf in a fancy cheese shop.

– Ye can kip there.

The woman points at a gap under a huge wooden dresser.

– You’re near the cooker so the floor is warm. If a rat comes, kill it! You look too delicate to kill anything but you will have to. I saw one last week. Size of a bairn. I used a spade to take its head clean off.

I smile.

– I heard about yer father, barred fae maist ay the islands is he, no? Why’d they no bar him fae this last yin?

– They knew he’d only row back and slit their throats whilst they slept.

There is a silence apart from the grandfather clock tick-tick-tick-ticking in the hall.

– What did he die from?

– I poisoned him.

– Terrible.

The woman tuts. Stacks up china plates. Whatever I say is not what she hears, or often, what anyone does. I’m like the girl in the story who lets toads fall from her mouth but others think they are pearls. I still have the smell of death on me. It will be weeks before it goes.

– What does Mr Udnam’s fiancée do?

– Elise is a suffragette, so she thinks. Marched with that Pankhurst wifey last year. Rich wummin have time fir aw that shite!

The woman inspects the width of my hips.

– Send her in!

We both look down the hall.

A red glow from the fire.

Drapes pulled.

The maid grabs her coat, crosses herself and leaves.

The front door clicks shut.