I pressed my hands into the bench. ‘You told him?’

He laughed. ‘Why do you think I allowed you back, knowing where you’ve been?’

Nausea. A vinegar wave from gut to mouth. My mind swung. I had to shake my head to make myself pay attention.

‘. . . take the child.’

‘What?’

‘Those are the conditions on which you have been allowed back.’ He swivelled his head to her. ‘On which Marguerite will be allowed to stay . . .’

I scraped up a laugh. ‘She asked me back.’

Still she would not look at me.

‘I’ve asked my man of affairs to find a house,’ he continued. ‘It will be . . . discreet. You’ll be given a character. A lifetime annuity. Do you know what that means? Enough to set you up somewhere, pay for its upkeep. More than you’d need in a lifetime. Afterwards, you’ll stay there. She’ll come back.’

‘You’re asking . . . ?’

‘You’ll take the child and raise it.’

I looked at him. How the world bends to the will of some men. I remembered what Sal had said, on my last day at the School-house: ‘You better not be thinking about going back. To her? How what she do you any different to what massa do any of the rest of us? I don’t care what she wants. Couldn’t be any good. You know it, too. Don’t just go running. Don’t do it.’

I turned to her. ‘You want me to take it?’

I wanted her to look at me and tell me she was sorry. But she twisted her face and slid her palms up and down on her skirts, and said nothing.

‘And do what with it?’

Benham shrugged. ‘What do you mean, gel? Whatever you want. It’ll be nothing to do with us.’

Every part of me was screaming against it.

Knowing where you’ve been.

When I looked up, he’d gone to stand behind her at the sofa, and it was as if I stared at a high blue wall behind which stood the pair of them. I felt a pang, a terrible hunger. I felt soiled. Knowing where you’ve been. I shook my head. ‘Now you both want me to wash away your sins.’

He worked a smile onto his mouth but it did not go there willingly and she kept gulping and gulping, and I turned blindly, straight into a little table. One of the room’s numberless crystal vases dropped, and shattered.

When we were alone again in her room, she broke apart, too, like a bundle of firewood. She took my hands. ‘Do not worry about the vase,’ she said. She brought her face close, raised a hand to my cheek. ‘I am sorry, Frances. He said he would divorce me. I had no choice. Oh, I hate him.’

I felt a lurch of anger; it flipped inside me like a tail. ‘It’s the Garden of Eden, then,’ I said. ‘It is Paradise Lost. You will be the fallen angel.’ I laughed bitterly. ‘And then you’ll have to join me in the streets.’