He threw back his head, laughed. Oh, he always found me amusing, perhaps because he thought he had created me himself.

But only a man would think splitting a baby in two was a solution rather than a problem, just like only a white man would consider slavery a difficult question. Women focus on what they lack, men on what they want. In all those Bible stories, it’s always the women who look back, who eat the forbidden fruit, who weep over hollow wombs, and fruitful ones. Yearning is always a woman’s sin. The men never turn around, nor ever think twice about taking a knife – or a cross – to their own longed-for sons.

‘That is a paper I am writing on the topic,’ he said, taking a sip of his tea. ‘In support of proposals that will ensure the welfare of West India workers, while assuring planters of their livelihoods.’

He went on to explain that Black River was his own experiment, his family’s Antigua estate, which his brother allowed him to run. He ran it like an English tenant farm, he said. His workers received religious instruction, holidays, their own little patches of land to plant. He believed the solution to keeping slaves was legislation that would ensure their fair treatment and guarantee everybody’s happiness, including theirs, and that the key was to convince the planters to do it themselves. ‘The guiding principle at Black River is virtue, and benevolence, and therefore affection is not only possible but mutual. My Negroes call me Mister, never Master.’

I had to bite my lip, so I wouldn’t laugh. ‘And you call them your Negroes and not your slaves?’

He flexed his jaw. ‘I’m interested in your opinion, girl.’

Anybody who wants a former slave’s opinion is looking to find either a happy slave, or a stricken one. The former doesn’t exist, and as for the latter, you already know my thoughts. I saw that part of Benham’s interest in Paradise was to set his own methods in opposition to Langton’s, and that was why he needed me. His object: not to abolish, but to preserve.

I found I could not hold my tongue. ‘About what happened this morning.’

‘This morning?’

‘At breakfast.’

Surprise crawled onto his face. ‘Nothing happened at breakfast.’

‘You were harsh with Madame.’

His hands flew off the desk; he pushed to his feet. ‘You speak out of turn, about matters that don’t concern you. A piece of advice. In this house, you’re better off taking your cues from me.’

I looked down at his sheet of paper, thin as a slip between my fingers. Weightless. White as nothing. I felt a springing anger. ‘I don’t know the first thing about running a West India estate,’ I said.

‘All I want is the truth.’

Truth had never set a foot between us.

You own me, I thought. You own her. You own all of us. Where is the virtue in that?

I decided to be frank. ‘It is a waste of time,’ I said, handing him back his paper.