He’d set me down. And I’d stayed where he’d put me. A nail in a plank.

I took a step. The words jolted out of me. ‘What have you done to me? What have you done? Why have you left me?’

I went over to him. I raised my hand, slapped him.

She looked up, Benham too. But Langton did not.

‘Will you ever suffer for what you’ve done?’ I asked his bent head. The strangled noise grew louder, became a cawing, choking sound. A spatter of fingers across the cloth, juddering the table, clutching plate, fork, knife. He wagged his lips, but no sound came out. The knife fell from his hands to the floor. ‘Oh!’ I cried.

I clasped his head to my chest, and the fit passed through us both and hammered his skull to my breastbone. The same devil. The same devil. When he went quiet, the room did. I looked up, saw Linux at the door, holding the bowl of compôte and the plate of madeleines. Her eyes flashed, like knitting needles.

In the kitchen, the kettle steamed quietly on the hob. The coal irons were still laid out on the hearth, where Pru and I had left them so we could polish them with beeswax before we put them away. Something sizzled, like hot tongs on hair. Mr Casterwick sat at the table, filling Benham’s decanter, and looked up when she dragged me in. I turned. ‘I’m sorry. I –’ But she slapped me. The floor slipped away, like a tooth from a gum. Cold stone slammed the back of my head. Her shadow came over me. ‘Savage, cunning little chit. You have disgraced this house.’

‘Mrs Linux –’ Mr Casterwick lifted his bottom off his seat, hovered like a fog, thought better of it.

‘I’ll thank you, Mr Casterwick, to keep out of matters that are not your affair.’ She turned around, and I saw a glint of kettle. ‘What did you do?’ she cried. I said nothing, kept my eyes on the kettle. She tugged at me; I drew back.

‘No, no, no, no!’ I screamed, pulling away, but I’d already been splashed, burned along my wrist. Everything gone bleached and cool and dark. She gripped me by the neck, pulled me to the door. The truth is she wouldn’t have got me back upstairs if I’d thought to fight.

Darkness crept across the attic room. I kicked out into it. My wrist stung, the soreness drumming like a heartbeat. A rattle at the door. ‘Who’s there?’ I called out, and then the knob turned, and when I looked up it was Pru, holding her bowl of mutton fat and her rushlight. She knelt beside me, and took up my hand in hers without saying a word, dabbed a scoop of fat onto my wrist.

I looked down at my hand. ‘She’s going to turn me out.’

‘Should have thought of that, shouldn’t you?’ She laid my hand back in my lap. ‘Needs linseed oil, but I haven’t got any.’