“Charlie says that Father cut you open. From the hip to the ribs. It must be quite a scar.”

And just like that our roles are inverted and heckler has become heckled. She is ready to continue, twist the knife. But I do what she found impossible to do. I start crying.

It takes her a minute before she wraps me in her arms.

ф

So we end up on the bed after all. Her clothes are so dirty she leaves stains on the bedding. She smells, too, of sweat and the street. I cling to her all the same, elbow hooked into elbow. It is well when emotion aligns with strategy. I wish to secure her loyalty. Her cheek rests an inch from mine. She is scrupulous about avoiding its touch.

“How is Father?” she asks, not shifting. “How is his health?”

“As ever, I hope. Thorpe is looking after him. You see, a search was made of our house. By now, the whole of England will be talking about him, poor soul. ‘Mad Baron Naylor.’ How he would have detested such gossip!” I pause, allow my emotions to sweep me from anger to nostalgia. “Do you remember, Livia? How he used to be?”

“Of course I do. He was righteous and gentle. Almost a holy man. Like that famous count in Russia, the one who walks around in peasant smock.”

“Tolstoy? What a funny thing to say! But no. I mean before all that. When you were young.”

“Before? He was — busy. Frantic, even. I remember him sitting in his study with so many papers around him they covered the floor. Always reading and scribbling. Talking over dinner. One month it was the Greeks, then a trip he was planning to the antipodes. He got so very excited, I thought he would start smoking, right in front of the servants.”

“He never made that trip. The antipodes.” It is funny that it should make me smile. “He went to the Argentines instead. Four months and one letter home. The vagabond!”

Livia is quiet at this, caught up in the past. Her head slides towards mine. She remembers herself just in time.

“Why did he go mad, Mother?”

“You know why he did.”

“The Smoke overcame him, and he got lost.”

“No. He had given up smoking. Quite successfully it must be said.”

“Why then?”

“Just that. He had given up and decided to become a saint. It put a strain on him, a terrible strain.”

I want to say more, explain it to her: how he foreswore his experiments and tried to conquer Smoke through a sheer act of will; how he changed week by week until it was too late, driven mad by the effort to be sinless; how he abandoned me and our love. But there are things too private for one’s child. Livia sees my hesitation, slides her feet off the bed and sits up.