For some things, there’s the same shame in fighting them as accepting them.

‘You should consider yourself lucky, you know,’ Pru said. She took a sip. ‘Being maid to George Benham. Many would give their eye-teeth, instead of howling about it.’

I huffed a breath. ‘One master’s as bad as another.’

‘True. Mr Benham’s no worse than the next one.’ Her eyes scuttled away and back. ‘But Mrs Linux says they call him the finest mind in England and we should be proud to work here. And he pays fair, and he stays out of your way, which is more than you can say for many of them. And he dotes on her. Madame. Though she doesn’t return it.’ She lowered her voice. ‘He can never be exciting enough for her – but nor can she ever be tame enough for him.’ Another sip. ‘You’d think ten years would be long enough married for her to settle into it. But I shouldn’t be tattling, for Mrs Linux don’t like us to be familiar.’ She set the bottle on the floor. ‘It is queer, you just being left here. Did you really not know anything about it?’

Not a thing.

I had pictured myself starting a new life in London. Even if it meant having to play maid to Langton. Instead I’d been left with a man I hated before we’d even met, and now had to play maid for him. I couldn’t think why Langton had done it. But I was always the last to know about a thing, before it happened to me.

Fear sent the walls tilted and black. Would the same work be required of me here that I’d done at Paradise? Was that why Langton had brought me? If anyone asked me, I decided – anyone – I’d do what I’d never done before: I’d refuse.

I gritted my teeth, sat upright, refusing to lie down, refusing to keep still. My mind skated and skated. A mind can always roam the possibilities, even when nothing else can. That’s the awful terror of it. Mine pushed its snout through the front door, into the streets. ‘How far are we from the river?’

‘What do you want with the river?’ She slanted her eyes at me.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just to know.’

‘Aye, well. Couldn’t be anything good, this time of night.’

When I could sit no longer, when my lids shuddered, I lay back, staring up at the ceiling. Pru turned over, sneezed, spoke to herself, ‘God bless me!’

I lifted my grey rag to my nose. Phibbah’s kerchief. The colour bleached out of it by the long ocean. The moon fingered the sill, trembled on the pane and along the wall. My thoughts trailed. Forward was all black, nowhere for them to go but into the past. Which was when I felt the pinch of memory, sharp as salt. I wrenched upright, breathing hard, stared down at the cold floor, at the long night.

After I closed my eyes it was the coach-house I saw behind the lids.