‘Hardly. I’m here mainly to persuade old friends to behave like friends.’

Benham’s forehead shone. He forked up mushrooms, spoke with his mouth full. ‘John’s had his manuscript knocked back by the Society.’

‘Oh?’ She cocked her head. ‘Is that your skull thing?’

‘A trifle more than that.’ He set his shoulders back, put his fork aside.

‘Is that right?’ Her smile spread slow, wide.

‘It would only bore you, Mrs Benham, I’m sure,’ he said, after a pause.

‘Go slowly, Mr Langton.’ She peered at him, her voice sharp. ‘And let us see whether my womanly brain can keep astride.’

Benham coughed out a brittle laugh. I kept my eyes on the back of Langton’s head. I was all anger. Anger a drumbeat. Anger, steady as rain on glass. Anger, like a hot spurt of blood from a wound. For a moment he simply stared up at the dark ribs of the ceiling. I thought he wouldn’t speak, and felt cold relief. The sins of Paradise should not be set down on that clean table. I couldn’t bear to stand there, while he crowed about Crania. But then he turned towards Benham, as if addressing him. ‘It’s a . . . study. We applied the scientific method to studying the anatomy . . . not only identifying the origin of skin colour, but examining its effects. We extracted out those parts of the Negro ‒ blood, and brain matter, and skin ‒ that are blackened, you see, reasoned out why. Why are they blackened, and how does this account for his excess of fear and stupidity? Your husband and I had agreed to collaborate ‒’

‘We were interested in the same question, that’s all,’ interrupted Benham, waving his knife. ‘And in no time disagreed on everything but. You insisted on all that nonsense with skin ‒’

‘What question?’

‘Is the Negro a separate species? It’s important work, and should be published,’ he said, staring at Benham.

She cut him off. ‘That old polygenist argument. Dogs and cows? That stale old dispute should have been buried long ago.’ She frowned. ‘You say you experimented on people?’

‘Cadavers, when we could get them.’

‘But . . . you were a grave robber, Mr Langton!’

‘Well . . . we can’t learn anything about bodies without cutting them ‒’

‘Not the cutting. The using people who cannot consent.’

‘Dead people –’

‘Slaves.’

‘What would you know about it?’

‘The better question is whether you were merely seeing what you wanted to see when you opened those bodies.’

‘Skin doesn’t lie.’

‘And hearts?’

‘The heart is nothing but a machine ‒’

She laughed. ‘That is an anatomist’s answer, if ever I heard one.’

Her husband gave her a sharp look and, for a moment, there was only the quiet spitting of the candles, but then came a strangled noise from Langton, who bowed his neck and swayed as if trying to catch his breath. I almost forgot myself and struck him between the shoulder blades, as I would have done at Paradise. I felt myself tipping forward, my throat clogged with anger, thick and dry as cotton. I let it swell inside. I welcomed it. Into the silence tipped this truth: my anger was aimed at myself. I stepped back, and my wrist struck the sideboard and the plates there joggled like loose stones.