Linux’s voice creaked like a stair. The supper had been laid out on the table. Pork, turnips, tumblers of ale. A Friday supper. She turned her granite eyes on me: ‘Those who know pride will surely also know the fall,’ she said.

The Bible lay beside her place. I had no appetite for it. The reading made me think of Paradise, of Phibbah. How Miss-bella would sometimes mutter, ‘The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.’

When I’d asked Phibbah what it meant, she’d kissed her teeth. ‘Some would say it mean that just ’cause a woman have everything don’t mean she don’t know how it feel to lose.’

The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.

If that’s right, there’s nothing you can do but sit back and wait, see what you get, see what gets taken away. Thank the giving Lord, or curse the thieving one.

She asked Mr Casterwick to carve, then started on her complaining. ‘On Monday, Charles, I was informed you were impertinent with clerks when sent to make the withdr‒’

‘Why do you do that?’ I interrupted, my own impatience boiling hot. Or was it the drug?

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Week after week you trot out Charles’s sins, or Pru’s, or mine. You seek only to humiliate.’

A smile carved into her face. ‘Oh. I haven’t humiliated you, girl.’ She lifted the knife away from Mr Casterwick, and stabbed the joint. Meat juices ran pink into the wood. ‘Yet.’

Later, Pru brought two of Madame’s dresses upstairs from the scullery. I took them from her in the hall, the door shut tight behind me.

‘Fran. You’re altogether too bold.’

‘Why do we let her treat us that way?’

She let her voice drop. ‘You’re a dog barking at the wrong bird. You’re only this bold because you think she’s your friend.’ She pointed her thumb at the door. ‘There never is such a thing as real friendship between the likes of them and the likes of us.’

‘I have to go back in, Pru,’ I said. I put my hand behind me on the latch. Already my mind was racing back to her, and how might I coax her to eat. The black night crouched, like a watchman, at the glass.

From the journals of George Benham

(Marked by George Benham as: NOT INTENDED FOR PUBLICATION)

Came upon Marguerite in the parlour yesterday, over-bright as she always is after every bout, the way the grass sparkles brightest after rain. ‘Look who’s here,’ she said.

Who should be on the settee, next to that Elliot woman, but the boy.

‘Laddie!’ she announced, gesturing towards him. Nervous. As she should have been. Did it in front of Hep Elliot so there’d be no scene. ‘Hep brought him. I had no idea!’

I’m sure she didn’t.

Lost and found. He didn’t seem at all discomfited on coming face to face with me, but then he’d had the advantage of knowing that he was under my roof. He gave me a half-hearted little bow, every desultory gesture towards me communicating – what? His ambivalence? His resentment? His revenge?