Then, when it all came out, she would lose her job as well. Imagining the loss made her understand how embedded she was in the house, in its grounds, in its people. They had given her a chance to live. The madder some of them were, the better she liked it, feeling healthy and whole by comparison, not like the oddity that her mother and the children at school had long ago made her think she was.

And what if Rudolf and Anton should discover what they had in common? How did men deal with that? According to what Rudolf had said, they’d compare experiences, make comments on her skin or on her thighs and laugh at her – though he himself apparently deplored such things. And Anton. She couldn’t picture him joining in the conversation for the simple reason that he hadn’t really noticed her. For him, she had been someone else entirely – the stand-in or double of a woman he had loved. And his passion had burned so hard that it had consumed itself with a bellowing cry at the end.

She put down the plate of boiled beef and horseradish in front of him. He thanked her with the same good manners – with a warmth that was more than social form, that registered her as someone worth consideration: registered, but still failed to remember.

If the two men discovered what they had in common she would leave the Schloss and go … Where? Not back to the treacherous parks and bars of Vienna. Perhaps to Bohemia. But she had no skills to offer, no way of making money, unless she took to painting portraits at the side of the street.

In the scullery, she drank some more wine from a bottle that had been partly decanted. When the kitchen porter was outside and the cook was bending over her pans, she drained another.

Back in the dining room, as she cleared the plates, she found a different mood had seized her. She felt desired. The fair man at Fräulein Midwinter’s table with the bright blue eyes had begged her to go and live with him in a smart apartment in Vienna, to have her own room – though doubtless she was expected also to perform as his mistress, wear new dresses and entertain the thinkers of the Rebirth party. And the man with the unruly moustache and the big nose, though less handsome, had been so aroused by her naked body that he had made love to her furiously for an hour, doing such things as she had hardly imagined, then almost expired with joy, as had she, at the conclusion.

The world was not without its comic side, or its redeeming features. Lena began to smile, feeling lighter on her feet. Back in the kitchen, piling the cleared plates on the sideboard, she heard her name called by Daisy’s husband, Hans, and turned to face him.

‘We can let them sit for five minutes before dessert,’ said Hans.