But it going come again. That blink. When it comes time to really let them go. That’s when it going come.

What can I say in my own defence? When I closed my eyes, I still saw the letters behind them. Folded small as daggers. They pierced holes in me, and let the intention pour right in. But I pressed myself against the window, flattening my skirts, my cheeks. Fighting it, I forced myself to stare down towards the pond, remembering how she would pluck at the grass whenever we sat there, and scrape through the dirt. Muck her nails. I curled my arms around my waist, holding myself back. A half-hour I stood there, perhaps longer. But she didn’t come back. A cloud swung over the sun and showed me my own face darkening the glass. I stepped away from it, turned towards her desk, pulled out a clean page. Lifted the pen.

Chapter Thirty-Two

The world had gone wrong. There were the letters, where eggshells should have been. Madame’s sins.

And me, committing them to paper.

Then the door creaked open. There was Linux. Smiling.

‘You never stay where you’re put, do you?’ she said. ‘Flitting from husband to wife like a bee to honeysuckle.’

‘What are you accusing me of now?’

‘Not accusation, girl. Facts. Strong enough to swing from.’

One arm peeled away from her chest. It had been so long since I had seen my blue serge that I’d been slow to recognize it. The dress I’d worn to London. The dress I’d left in the attic. Then we raced each other down the halls. It was a strange echo of my first night, the sconces empty, the walls bathed in sunshine. Light cutting into dark.

This time I knew the way as well as she.

She knocked the jamb, shivering the frame. Benham gave a bird-hop, raised his hands to palm his waistcoat, as if we’d caught him dipping them where they didn’t belong.

‘What in God’s name . . . ?’

She leaned over and dropped the bundle onto his table.

‘A dress, Mrs Linux?’

‘Beg pardon, sir, it’s what’s inside.’

‘She means there’s a book sewn there, in the hem,’ I said. ‘One of your books. Which I took from your library. Candide.’

‘Stole.’ Linux tapped a fingernail on the serge. ‘Stole.’

Benham looked down at the dress, up at me.

I sucked in my cheeks. ‘I wanted something to read.’

‘It has turned out as I’ve been saying all along, sir,’ said Linux, her voice slipping with glee, ‘and I take no pleasure in that, for in keeping with her character the girl has proved herself a thief. Perhaps you will heed me now. There is a greater danger in keeping her, though I know you believe it is a mercy. But what is said about them, sir? The African is sly, and lascivious, and lazy. And she is all those things! And a danger to this house besides.’

Were things not so dire, I’d have laughed. She might have been reading out Langton’s own words that I had scribed myself.