‘Pru.’ I looked at her.

‘Maybe. What can you do about it? What can any woman do?’ she said. ‘You get married, or you go into service.’ She crossed her hands, gave me a hard look. ‘You’d need a character to get a place and you won’t get one from her, not now. My ma used to tell us, “Speak when you’re spoken to, do what you’re bidden, come when you’re called and you’ll not be chidden.”’ She shook her head. ‘I knew something bad was coming, you know. A coal spat from the grate and landed at my feet after I lit the fire in Madame’s bedchamber this morning, and the day before I saw a winding sheet in the tallow candle in Mrs Linux’s parlour. And then there they were tonight, three at a table.’

‘What does all that mean?’

‘Death.’ She made wide eyes. I said nothing. A tight thread of silence stretched between us. Langton is dying, I thought. I had seen it. There was no hope that he would be coming back for me. At last, she squinted up at the latch, gave out a sigh. ‘I’ll have to shift, get back down before I’m missed.’

‘You risked coming up, for me.’

She shrugged. ‘My nan always said mercy is a soothing balm, just as good to give as to receive.’ She yawned, held one hand up to her mouth. ‘No use greetin’ over it now. Whatever it is in the morning, it won’t be this.’ She patted my arm and then pulled herself to her feet, gathering up her bowl and her light. At the door, she stopped, hand on the knob. ‘Frances . . . who is Mr Langton to you?’

I slid one hand over the opposite palm, kept them busy with each other. My wrist was numb under the grease, pink as a newborn. I pressed it to a sting, trying to scour the dark thoughts from my head, kept my eyes down so I wouldn’t have to look her in the face when I answered.

Pru’s still the only person I ever told out loud.

‘He’s my father.’

Chapter Seventeen

What did that make me? A patchwork monster. A thing sewn from Langton’s parts. The sum of his seed, for all I knew: Miss-bella was childless.

It was she who told me, though she waited until it was too late. And, oh, I wanted to kill him, when I learned it, but I wanted to kill her also, for that.

It was all quiet in those days. No Phibbah, no snick of peas, no floorboard cracks. The river through the hills, like a long black scar. The sun high as noon. But that’s what Jamaica days were like. Either morning sun, noon sun, evening sun, or rain. Never anything different. We stood outside together on the porch. She had stopped me, on my way to the coach-house. ‘I want you to tell me what my husband thinks he’s doing in there . . .’