It sounded very like a plan to starve her out.

Linux said I was to black the grates that morning, before lighting any fires. I was to spend more hours than I’d care to write about at Levenhall making sheets white, and grates black. Those are the two marks of a well-tended English house. And that was my so-called freedom.

There’d been little to no need for inside fires in Montego Bay, so I was going through in my head how Pru had told me to tackle the grates, carrying my cloth, and a tarry paste of lead-black and water, when I stepped into the parlour, and saw that Madame was already in it. Curled small, folded into an armchair before the hearth, holding the same black book she’d had the day before. An apple lay beside her on the chair, and wine glinted from a glass set on a table beside her elbow. She must have finished her chocolate, I thought. A lit candle stood beside the glass in a silver holder, and more of them along the mantel, for they always wanted extra light in those lower rooms, even at the height of morning. I saw I’d have to pass right by her to reach the hearth. My feet hooked on the jamb. She seemed nothing like the woman from yesterday. Quiet, stiff. Wet ribbons of hair hung over her shoulders, leaking dark circles onto her dress. The room was so yellow it could have been planted in good soil, bouquets of lavender and myrtle studded in vases on the mantel and the sill and all the tables. It had the feeling of sunshine trapped in it. Some men are rich enough to make their own weather, I thought.

A gold-framed mirror hung on one wall, a portrait on the one opposite. I jumped when I saw what it was. Madame glistened from the canvas, throat long and white as church columns, one small hand resting on the head of a black boy kneeling at her feet. He was holding up a wooden bowl scattered with corals and petals and shells, his face in shadow. I wondered if this was the blacky servant Pru had mentioned, who’d caused the ‘bother’. I looked from her to the painting, back again. The light fell across a dark bruise on her cheek. She reached for her glass, took a sip. Picked up the apple, bit into it.

‘Are you just going to stand there?’ she said, without looking up.

I flinched, coughed out apologies. ‘Beg pardon, ma’am.’ When I set down the bucket, tin clanged against the hearth-stones, making me jump and jerking her head up, insect-quick, down again just as fast. I folded over my cloth, knelt to wipe loose dust and ash from the grate, as Pru had instructed, before dipping up the blacking. I saw that she was thin as rope, beneath her bunched grey sleeves. Nothing but silk and bone. I moved my cloth down to the tiles, rubbed one, then the next. My heart picked up a beat as I came closer.