‘Is that a novel?’ I interrupted.

‘Rousseau’s Confessions. His autobiography. A book he wrote about himself.’

‘I know what an autobiography is.’

‘Of course. Do you know, I still remember where I was the first time I read him. The friends who had taken us in after we first came here from Paris had a library. We spent many years with them. Oh, that was a part of London I could feel welcome in! Someone else’s sentences, twisting, turning, moving, as all things must, towards their own ends. Sometimes where they take you is right to your own bewildered heart. One afternoon it was Monsieur Rousseau’s voice I heard there . . . Well! I could go on and on about those things. I bore most people to tears. Yet . . . with all that talk of science, last night, I cannot think of anything worse than spending all that time and energy trying to understand the mechanics of life but not the beauty of it.’

‘Or the ugliness.’

‘Precisely!’ She turned suddenly, crossed to the dressing-table, slippers leaving soft prints in the carpet, like tooth-marks in bread. Set the book down and picked up a hairbrush. ‘He’s a man of words, my husband, but he prefers to chase them. Like some men chase butterflies. And he also pins them under glass.’ She turned the brush over and over in her hands, and spoke into the looking-glass. ‘We understand each other, I believe.’

‘Your husband?’

She laughed. ‘You and me.’

‘Oh.’

‘Is it strange of me to say so?’

A heartbeat, a breath.

‘Are you good with a needle?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hair?’

‘You are not turning me out?’

‘Oh! I haven’t said it plain, have I? I want you for my abigail. A secretary, I suppose. I do want to write, you see. I have decided to, and Mr Benham says I may, and that I might have you to help me.’

‘Me?’ I rose to my feet. It came to me that I should not feel pleased. It would only be swapping one kind of maiding for another. An iron cage for a gilded one. But I did. Oh, I did. ‘Mrs Linux won’t like it.’

‘No.’ She smiled. ‘She won’t.’

Downstairs, Linux was making hot-water crusts. She smothered kettle screams with a clean towel, wrapped the handle, poured water into a copper pot.

‘I’m to take up some chocolate,’ I said from the door.

She didn’t look up, but measured out two scoops of fat, lifted her wooden spoon, beat at the dough. ‘For Madame,’ I said.

I walked over to the table where the coins had been set.

She stilled. ‘You’re to take those only if you’re leaving.’

‘I’m staying.’

Her eyes flitted over to me, boiling black. ‘I see. Well, take the chocolate, then. Is anyone stopping you?’ She unhooked the keys, threw one at me. ‘Isn’t she just the sort who’d lap up a darky maid like a cat at a plate of cream?’

I jangled the key in my hand. ‘She wants cake rusks as well.’