Her face crumpled when I shook her awake. ‘Let me sleep . . .’ Her eyes rolled, her breath too. But, at last, she let me take it. I worked on the living body first, then the dead one. This was work I knew. I kept my hands busy. Washed her, changed her gown. I felt the fire move out of the grate and into my bones. Watched the ash cool white. ‘I’ll have to get fresh sheets,’ I said. ‘And we’ll need to burn these.’ She didn’t even look up. I drew an almighty breath. ‘I’ll have to burn it, too.’

That roused her. She sat up, slid her hands across the bed. ‘No.’

The bottle was on the bedside table, and I could see the tooth-marks of the drug upon her. Only a dark swirl left, mere dregs. My hand quaked with wanting it myself. I’d have licked the rim.

‘How much did you take?’ I asked.

She frowned. ‘I have not slept since you were here.’

A tiny flame. She needs me. Still.

‘How much?’ I repeated.

‘I didn’t know what you would decide. And I have been all agony, waiting. I wanted ‒’ She gave a sharp cry. She wouldn’t look at me. ‘But when I saw it – And now. I –’ She broke off. ‘I only wanted –’

‘You wanted what you got,’ I interrupted. ‘You wanted it gone.’ It was cruel of me. All she’d done was make sure she wanted no more than she was allowed.

She trembled, under the bedcovers, made me promise we’d bury it, and begged me never to breathe a word. A promise you already know I’ve been forced to break.

I nodded towards the basin. ‘Are you going to tell him?’

‘No.’

‘He’ll find out.’

‘He will. But not today.’ Her mouth flickered. ‘I swear I will wean myself.’

‘He will be glad of it.’

‘The loss? Or the weaning?’

‘Both.’

She needed it, then, she said. She had to look well, fool them. Fool him. Give him Marvellous Meg. What was needed was a resurrection. Laudanum, she said, was the only way she could survive the night. We’d have to smooth her skin with powders and her nerves with the syrup. She’d wear breeches, under her skirts, padded with towels. It would take a small miracle to get her downstairs, and get her sparkling. I lifted the second bottle from the cabinet. ‘Some brandy, too,’ she said, so I got that as well. She opened for it, the spoon tipping to her mouth.

I told her I’d bring fresh sheets. But, first, I brought the little creature up with me to the attic, wrapped in a bedsheet. I thought no one had seen me. I went out. Bought the jar, bought the arsenic.

A body can be embalmed in arsenic. Did you know that? Useful knowledge for your trade, no doubt. It was useful for the one I’d practised at Paradise. Most of my learning has been a burden, but that was one of the only fruitful things I learned: arsenic and water, four ounces to a gallon.