Alice’s eyes widened in shock and her breath caught in her throat. She glanced at Grace in the mirror, but she was busying herself with the fastenings and hadn’t looked up. Alice then caught sight of her own face, which had turned a particularly concentrated shade of beetroot. Just as she was wracking her brains for a witty response to cover up her embarrassment, Grace patted her back.

‘All done!’ She smiled as Alice turned around, apparently unaware of Alice’s embarrassment. ‘Right, I’ll help you get yourself ready and then I’ll come down with you. Your witchcraft training begins today and I’m loath to leave you alone.’

The moment to be witty had passed, and Alice was left with an uncomfortable, dry mouth and a heartbeat that refused to calm. Had Grace been joking when she had suggested that she was in the habit of undressing girls? Did she mean that she just helped out girls here with their undressing out of politeness, or did she mean something else? Did she mean that she, Grace, frequently undressed girls for a reason other than courtesy?

For a long time, Alice had been at war with herself over her feelings and her emotions. She remembered Lily having crushes on the village boys, of her going all giggly if one of them looked at her or came into the apothecary to talk to her. Alice, at first, didn’t spare a thought for the fact that she had never once felt giggly or breathless around a boy. In fact, she had never felt anything of the sort with anyone and she had simply presumed that there were other routes laid out for her in life, away from men and marriage and children. And she had been more than happy about that.

However, one night when she was fifteen or sixteen, she’d had a dream that had upended her previous notions of love. She had dreamed that a girl from the village had come to visit her in her cabin, a girl who was not Lily. The girl had invited herself into Alice’s home and, after a few minutes of conversation, she had kissed Alice.

She had woken up with a shock, her entire body covered in tiny fizzing jolts and her stomach bursting with butterflies. It had been as if a curtain had been dragged away from a window Alice didn’t even know existed, and suddenly the world was clearer; it had shone with the clarity of understanding. She had not realised – still did not understand – that it was possible for a girl to love another girl that way; it wasn’t something she had ever seen before. But now she knew the love she felt for Lily and the feelings that had been awoken by the dream were as different as the forest and the moor.

After the initial shock had worn off, Alice had decided that it was probably best not to share this part of herself with the world, and had learnt to live with it locked away in a dark, quiet corner of her heart. The last few days, in Grace’s company, she had felt a gentle tugging at those caged feelings, and now she was very aware that there was a high chance those feelings were about to burst out like a swarm of bees from an agitated hive and there was nothing she could do about it.