Over a week had passed and there had been no word of Raymond. Only the whispers in the kitchenette at night. Only the abhorrent silence in the ballroom. Only the rumour that Rosa said she’d heard from a guest who’d heard it from a dancer down in the ballroom: Raymond de Guise was a blackguard. They say he was bedding some poor kitchen girl and ran out on her when the management found out . . .

She was approaching the Continental when she saw the door to one of the neighbouring rooms left hanging ajar. Chambermaids were taught that their presence in the Buckingham was not to be detected, that – for better or worse – they were to leave everything apparently untouched, no matter how unsavoury it might seem. Rosa had a story about a book of French postcards she’d observed in the suite of Elizabeth Enache, the Romanian countess who frequented in the summer season – every one of them detailing, without any shame, the beauty of a certain lady dancer from Constantinople. Almost everyone who’d worked at the Buckingham for long enough had seen something to make them blush, but the rule was simple: ‘You were never there, girls,’ Mrs Moffatt would say, with a nod and a wink.

Nancy had almost passed the door when she smelt the pungent tang of vomit in the air. Not even the collection of vinegars and polishes on her trolley were enough to eclipse that ripe scent.

Stay invisible! the voice in her head kept imploring her.

But Nancy opened the door to Vivienne Edgerton’s suite.

The figure lying slumped on the floor at the side of the bed was none other than Vivienne Edgerton herself. Nancy rushed to her side. Perhaps she’d rolled out of bed in the night – but, as soon as she dropped to the carpet to rouse her, she knew it was more than that. The carpet was sticky with whatever Vivienne had thrown up the night before; her face was caked in orange and red. Her skin beneath was a ghostly white – and, though it barely showed through the smudged Tangee lipstick that she wore, her lips were shrivelled and paling to blue.

‘Vivienne?’ Nancy whispered, forgetting herself. ‘Miss Edgerton?’

There was no reply. Nancy dared to touch her hair, brushing it away from her face. The girl was breathing; it was only faint but at least it convinced Nancy that she was still alive. She remembered her father. She’d found him like this once as well, the bottle of pills from the doctor half-empty at his side. The memory of it was almost as powerful a trauma as discovering him that April morning: the early spring sunshine tumbling through the window, and her father lying prone in a pool of his own filth. That had been the day she convinced him: no more. No matter what the pain, no matter what the distress, no more whisky . . . and no more dependence on laudanum.