Peregrine rose steadily enough and took his mother’s arm as she went towards the door. He opened it and held it wide for her and me to pass through. As I went by he gave me a grin as brotherly and warm as an urchin who has scraped out of an adventure.

‘Pretty fair,’ he said under his breath, and went back to the table.

27

I went to bed early that night, and drew back my heavy curtains from the window. After years of sleeping in a wagon I should have rejoiced in the space and the comfort of having a whole room to myself, of being able to see the moon through clear clean glass. But I was a silly, ungrateful drab. After all my pining for the gentry life I was low that night and missed the wagon and the noise of other people snoring, breathing, dreaming all around me. I missed the warm dirty smell of the place. I missed the sight of Da’s rumpled head and Zima’s dirty locks. I missed the little snorting breaths of the baby. I made sure I did not think about the bunk opposite from where I used to see her dark head and her slow lazy waking smile.

Robert Gower had been good to me, by his lights. He had paid me my ten guineas and he had cared for Sea without charge. When I came off the trapeze he had me nursed in his own house and I never paid him a penny out of my wages for the doctor’s bill. I thought of the little house off Warminster High Street, I thought of the wagon with the painting and the curly writing on the side and how, somewhere, it would be parked up for the night, the fire burned down to embers outside the steps, a pan of water nearby for Robert to wash in the morning. On the side of the wagon there was my likeness and my name. My old name. The one I would never use again from the life I had left.