‘What happen?’ Sal said. ‘You see duppy?’

The nose was wrong. Too harsh, too narrow. She’d curled her hair into those fat swinging sausages they had all wanted that Season. ‘It’s her,’ I said. ‘Says here she was trying to swim in the fountain. At Almack’s. Do you know Almack’s? Finally gone and got herself banned.’

But already I was skimming the remaining lines, tripping over my breath. She’d had Laddie, then the drug, then me. What did she have now? The drug again, I thought. Only the drug. She’d sworn she had not been trying to swim, that the patronesses were simply looking for scandal, anything to give their tedious little Assemblies a thrill. I didn’t notice until I straightened that Sal had stilled, razor pinched between two fingers. ‘Fran. I done. You hear me? Done, done, done. I done talking about you white woman, and all them white people you left behind. You should be too.’ I watched her, and swung my jaw shut. ‘If you count losses all the time,’ she said, turning back to the mirror, ‘losses be all you have.’

What had I lost?

Two faces pressed together in the dark. Small embers of breath. The feeling that here was all my happiness at last.

Some things are always better done by someone else, like pulling teeth. I needed someone to thread twine between my heart and the door handle. Two mornings later, I shoved a fist under my pillow and crossed the hall. Sal was still in bed, smoking, a tray propped on her knees. Each morning she made Martha bring her whatever puddings and jellies had been left in the dessert bowls the night before, and a single cigar. She said she felt not an ounce of guilt about the sugar. ‘It surely better to eat than make.’

It was always warm in Sal’s room. Mrs Slap had put a marble surround in there at the fireplace, with laughing cherubs carved into it, and there was a rose-pink settee in one corner, beside Sal’s paddling bench. Even Sal looked softer in there, her face smudged with sleep. I handed her the clipping, folding the page away from me.

‘You kep’ this?’ Her mouth shrank like a thirsty flower. ‘You love to pull pain right off the goddamn shelf.’

‘Seems so.’

‘All right.’ She looked up at me. ‘What I suppose to do with it?’

‘Burn it.’

Five months. Through September, through the drying leaves, then the falling ones. I stayed to watch London moving towards dark winter again.

I’m close now to having to write about all those things I wish I could forget, yet I can only write about them, for there are some things I will never be able to say out loud. Now, I must come full circle. Departure to return. But what I haven’t told you yet is that Mr Benham sought to turn me out again, the very day he was killed. And that I argued with him, not just with her.