She reached behind the dresser and pulled out a big looking glass, at least a foot square. She held it up for me to see myself, and I craned my neck trying to see all of me in the one glass. I had shot up in height, I was nearly full grown and I had fattened up at last, I was no longer wiry and scrawny. I had filled out. The curves of my body were usually hidden by my smock or by the cut-down shirts of Jack’s I wore for work. Now, in my chemise I could see that my breasts had grown. I had a shadow of hair in each armpit and at my groin. My buttocks were smooth and as tightly muscled as a racehorse. My legs were long and lean, bruised like a charity schoolboy. I took a step closer to the mirror and looked at my face.

The hair I had hacked off in the summer had regrown and now fell to my shoulders in thick copper waves. The tumbling colour of it softened the hungry hard lines of my face and when I smiled the reflection which I saw was that of a stranger. My eyes seemed to have grown more green this winter, they were still set slanty as a cat, black-lashed. My nose was slightly skewed from the fall from the trapeze, my face would never be perfect. I would never have Dandy’s simple rounded loveliness.

‘You will be a great beauty,’ Mrs Greaves said. She took the mirror gently from me and tucked it back. ‘I only hope it will bring you some joy.’

‘I don’t want beauty,’ I said, and though I was a young girl and not very wise I told her the truth. ‘I don’t want beauty and I don’t want a man,’ I said. ‘All I want is a place of my own and some gold under my mattress. And Dandy safe.’

Mrs Greaves chuckled and helped me tie the strings at my cuffs. ‘The only way for a lass like you to get that is to find yourself a man and hope he’s a rich one,’ she counselled. ‘You’ll like it well enough when you’re older.’

I shook my head but said nothing.

‘What about that sister of yours?’ she asked me. ‘She’s set her sights on Master Jack, hasn’t she? Small change she’ll get there.’

I looked warily at Mrs Greaves. She worked in silence at the dinner table, she cooked in silence in the kitchen. But she saw a good deal more than anyone might expect. I knew she was not in Robert’s confidence, but I feared what she might tell him.

‘Who says?’ I asked, cautious as a hedgerow brat.