‘Easy. Matthew Jarvis has the key in a desk in his office. It isn’t one of the newfangled ones with a dial.’

‘And where will we go?’

‘We’ll go to Paddington and take a train somewhere. You’ll need to be heavily veiled so that no one recognizes you.’

‘I’m such a coward,’ said Rose. ‘But I cannot face the captain. I cannot face seeing the press outside the door.’

‘So we’ll do it,’ said Daisy, hoping privately that Becket would be so alarmed at her disappearance that he might come to his senses.

As dawn was breaking, Rose and Daisy sat in a first-class carriage as the train to a small seaside resort called Thurby-on-Sea pulled out of Paddington station. Rose could only be glad that they had the compartment to themselves because the heavy veil she was wearing was stifling her. Daisy lowered the blinds on the corridor windows. ‘I brought a packed lunch,’ she said. ‘We daren’t go into the dining room because you’d need to raise your veil to eat.’

The train roared south, Rose lowering her veil every time it stopped at a station in case someone joined them in the compartment, but they were left alone until they reached Thurby-on-Sea.

‘Why Thurby-on-Sea?’ asked Rose wearily as they finally stood on a small windswept platform.

‘I’ve never heard of it,’ said Daisy cheerfully, ‘so I suppose most people haven’t either. Porter!’

Once settled in a cab, they asked the driver to take them to a good hotel. He drove to the Thurby Palace, which was smaller than its grand name suggested. It was situated on a promenade along which a gale whipped with increasing ferocity.

Daisy checked them in under the names of the Misses Callendar. ‘Why Callendar?’ whispered Rose.

‘It just came to me,’ Daisy whispered back. ‘I used to dance with a Scotch girl who came from there.’ Daisy had once been a chorus girl.

They were ushered into two bedchambers with a sitting room in between.

Rose walked to the window of the sitting room and looked out at the plunging waves, which were now sending spray up over the promenade.

‘It’s cold in here,’ complained Daisy. She pulled the bell rope beside the fireplace, and when the porter answered the summons asked him to light the fires.

He looked curiously at the heavily veiled figure of Rose standing by the window.

‘Get on with it,’ snapped Daisy.

They waited until he had left. Rose unpinned her hat and veil and sat down by the sitting room fire, stretching her hands out to the blaze.

‘I brought some stuff from the masquerade box,’ said Daisy. ‘I’ll disguise you so that we can go down to the dining room and get something to eat. It’s just noon.’

Rose stifled a yawn. The train had taken four hours, stopping at innumerable tiny stations before creaking into Thurby-on-Sea on the Essex coast.

Daisy was unlocking their luggage. ‘Here!’ she said triumphantly. She held up a grey wig and a pair of spectacles. ‘Put these on. No one will recognize you from your photo in the newspapers.’