I blinked. I tried to say ‘Yes?’ but my voice was burned away in the hotness of my throat. I nodded. Even that slight movement made all the swollen muscles in my neck shriek with a pain which clanged inside my head like an echoing belfry.

‘You look very ill, do you feel unwell?’ Rimmings voice was so sharp it cut into the tender places behind my eyes and inside my ears.

‘Yes,’ a little whisper of sound managed to creep out. She heard it, but she did not bend closer to hear me better. She was keeping her distance from my breath.

‘It’s the typhus for sure!’ said Sewell, my maid. I turned my head stiffly on the sweaty pillow and looked at her. If it was the typhus I was done for. I had seen my Rom ma die of it and I knew how hard the illness was, like a harsh master who breaks your spirit before throwing you aside. If I had been on Wideacre I think I might have stood against it, I might have fought it. But not in London where I was always tired, always ill at ease, and with so little joy in my days.

‘That’ll do!’ Rimmings said abruptly. ‘And not a word of this in the servants’ hall if you want to keep your place.’

‘I don’t know I do want my place with typhus in the house,’ the girl said defiantly, backing towards the door, her eyes still on me. ‘’Sides, if it’s typhus she won’t need a dresser will she? She won’t need a maid at all. Her la’ship had best get a nurse for as long as Miss lasts.’

Rimmings nodded. ‘I don’t doubt she’ll have a nurse,’ she said. I watched her through half-closed eyelids. I did not think I could bear to have a stranger pushing me around the bed, pulling me around, stripping me and washing me. I knew the London nurses. They worked as layers-out and midwives too; dirty-handed, foul-mouthed, hard-drinking women who treated their patients – quick and dead – the same: as corpses already.

Rimmings remembered me. ‘Some of them are very good,’ she lied. Then she turned to Sewell. ‘Get some fresh lemonade, and a bowl of water. You can sponge her face.’

‘I’m not touching her!’ The girl stood firm.

‘You’ll do as you’re ordered, miss!’ Rimmings burst out.

She didn’t care. I closed my eyes and the squabble came to me dimly in great heaving waves of noise.