If I had been the crying sort I would have wept that night. But I was not. I lay wrapped tight in the coverlet on my back. When I woke in the night my face was wet and the carpet under my head was damp as if all the tears from the day, and from all the days, had crept out from under my eyelids when I was asleep. I got up then, stiff and chilled, and slid between the sheets. It was about three o’clock in the morning. I wished very much that it had been me who had died and not her.

I woke early, and I looked at the cool light on the white ceiling, and then I said it. I said the words that had gone with me all my life, which I had hoped to escape here: ‘I don’t belong here,’ I said.

I lay still then for a few moments, listening to the desolation of that voice inside me which told me that I was alone, that I was lonely, that I belonged nowhere now, that I had never belonged anywhere, that I never would belong anywhere. I knew it was true.

I was keeping travellers’ hours and I was as restless as a stable cat shut indoors. There was no noise from the kitchen nor the sound of the maid cleaning the fires, it was too early even for her.. I trod softly over to the wardrobe and looked for my riding habits. One was being washed and the other was not there. I had torn a seam the day before and Lady Clara’s maid had taken it away to mend it. She would bring it back at breakfast time, but I needed to be out now. At the bottom of the wardrobe, pushed well back, were my old clothes. Jack’s old breeches, his boots, Robert’s thick jacket. I pulled them out and dressed myself quickly. I pulled my good riding boots on and they fitted me a deal more comfortably than ever had Jack’s hand-me-downs. I went soft-footed to the door and opened it a crack to listen.

I had been right, it was too early for anyone to be stirring. As I crept down the wooden stairs I heard the clock in the hall strike the quarter-hour. I looked at it in the pale light. It was only a quarter past five. I stepped as delicately as a mare on an icy road over the black and white tiles of the hall and through the baize door to the kitchen. All was clean and tidied away and quiet. A red eye of embers glowed inside the kitchen stove, a black cat asleep on the flat top.