It grieved Perry. He had moved his things to the room next door, to reinforce his claim to the marriage if anyone should dispute it in the future, after my death. He kept the adjoining door unlocked and he often came through to sit with me. Often he would stumble in to see me after a night of gambling and he would sit at my bedside and mumble through the hands he had played and the points he had lost. When I was feverish I thought he was Da – forever bewailing his ill luck, forever blaming others. Eternally gulled by those he had set out to cheat. Perry was not a cheat but he was a ripe fat pigeon. I could imagine how the card-sharpers and the gull gropers would beam when he rolled into a new gambling hell and smiled around with those innocent blue eyes.

When I was cool and the fever had given me a moment’s respite I would ask him how it was with him, whether his creditors had given him time now that it was known he was married. He dropped his voice so low that it would not disturb the rough night nurse who sat, snoring, by the fire, and he told me that everyone had offered him extra credit, that he had gone through the figures with his lawyers and that he thought he could very well manage to live the life he liked on the profits from the joint Havering-Wideacre estates.

‘It has to be ploughed back,’ I said faintly. I could feel the beat of the fever starting deep inside my body again. Already the covers were feeling hot and heavy on the bed, soon I should start to shake and to shiver. Laudanum would stave off the pain, but nothing would hold back the waves of heat which drained my mind of thoughts and dried my mouth.

‘I can’t plough it back this year,’ Perry started. ‘Maybe next, if there is enough…’ But then he saw how my face had changed and he broke off. ‘Are you ill again, Sarah?’ he asked. ‘Shall I wake the nurse?’

I nodded. I was drowning in a wave of heat and pain, slowly, in the crimson darkness I could hear the rasp rasp of my breath coming slowly into me, and then I felt my throat thicken yet tighter and I knew I would not be able to get my breath for much longer.

Dimly I heard Perry shouting at the nurse and shaking her awake. She stamped across to the bed and her broad arm came under my shoulders and my head fell back against her sweaty gown. She tipped the laudanum down my throat in one smooth practised gesture and I retched and heaved for breath.

‘Her throat’s closing up,’ she said to Perry in her hard voice. ‘It’s the end. Best get her la’ship if she wants to bid her g’bye.’