Everyone would be sympathetic, everyone would be sorry for her trouble, and everyone would be secretly delighted. Thrilled, in fact: not merely relieved that it did not happen to them, for the retention of mere equilibrium was no cause for excitement. Every time someone else fell, they embraced it as proof that they were better than she, and a vindication of the way they each ran their own homes and raised their families.

It was like a dance: it made its own self-contained sense, and required a grace and skill to execute it. But equally, if you could not hear the music, the movement and posturing would seem absurd, the orchestration slavish.

It took me a long time to hear the music, though I quickly understood that I would never be permitted to partake of the dance itself.

Martha was already in the parlour, waiting for me to join her in making final preparations for the guests.

She called out as I descended the stairs: ‘Mary, time waits for no man!’

It was a knowing remark, urging me to make haste by using a favoured expression of her mother’s.

I was fastening the last button on my dress as I came in. It was cornflower blue and a little baggy because it belonged to Martha first, but I nonetheless enjoyed having the occasion to dress in something fine. I had just changed out of my working clothes. My morning had been busier than normal, preparation for Mrs Dempster’s at-home supplementing my usual duties. As well as helping the cook, I had been beating carpets, dusting furniture, polishing tables and cleaning up after the household’s three dogs and two cats. Having been raised in the country, Mrs Dempster liked to have animals around her. She also rode, though she did not own a horse. She did, however, own a horsewhip.

Martha’s preparation for this gathering had been to spend the morning practising the pianoforte for the recital she was to give. She was nervous about the prospect, concerned about disappointing the guests and terrified of letting her mother down. She did not understand that the guests would be disappointed only if she played flawlessly. Martha had been too cosseted to see the real world that rotted beneath the painted façades.

I remember the first time I laid eyes upon Martha, though more vividly I remember how she smelled. She emerged red-cheeked from the warmth of the kitchen, the happy odours of fresh baking enveloping her. She looked at me with an anxious curiosity, excited in her anticipation but a little apprehensive too.

‘This is Mary,’ Mrs Dempster had said. ‘She’s going to be living here now.’

I often thought back to this choice of words, how I hadn’t been described as Martha’s stepsister, nor as being adopted. The blurring of status had begun immediately.