I slipped out, closed the door and went back downstairs.

Later that day, when I went to her room, she was tucked into one of the chairs, pages scattered on the floor and on her lap, and I saw that she was feeding them to the fire. Paper burning to black petals and then to ash. Her memoirs. I would soon learn that the work on them started and stopped, depending on her moods. She squinted into the grate after each page, cocking her head. Unblinking.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Oh. I know, I know. All that writing! Ashes to ashes . . .’ Her voice trailed, and she tipped forward with a slow effort. I thought with a stab of confusion she must be drunk. I remembered a conversation we’d had about her papa: ‘You can always tell, straight away, with drunks. It’s the smile. They have cruel smiles.’

She went on until her fingers grappled air, then stared at her empty lap.

I set down the tray. ‘Madame?’

When she looked up, she spied the lily I’d plucked out of the vase that stood in the front hall. ‘How lovely! I prescribe one such theft every morning. Though they are hot-housed in winter, you know. All the flowers are.’

It was false cheer, thick as a coating of tallow.

‘It seems everything is hot-housed here,’ I said.

She flicked her face towards me. ‘Oh, I have made you cross. I can see that. Destroying your lovely pages. But I read them over this morning and knew they must not be allowed to stand. Everything in the world is already more terrifying or beautiful than anything we can put into it. What is the use attempting to add to it?’

Everything in the room, including my time, including me, was hers to do with as she would. What I wanted wouldn’t matter. Never had. I swallowed, hoped my thoughts wouldn’t show on my face, made myself shrug. ‘They are your pages.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh.’ She gave me a sharp look. ‘You needn’t feel you must tiptoe around me, Frances. We will be such great friends. I know it.’

‘Yes, Madame, thank you,’ I said, in a voice smooth as apples.

She pushed suddenly to her feet, went over to her cabinet, and when she straightened, she was holding a vial. Her laudanum, I realized. She’d been careful never to let me see her taking more than Dr Fawkes prescribed. But Dr Fawkes came as often as the tides. Every time, the dose crept like a vine up a wall. Eight grains. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. I was the one who went down to Apothecary Jones in Knightsbridge to fetch it. How well I came to know his dark little shop, crowded by bottles. Arsenic, prussic acid, laudanum.

She stood for some time staring at the cabinet door. Then she spoke: ‘Mr Benham has said I may not publish after all.’

‘Oh.’

‘Well. I have misunderstood him, it seems. I may write, but that is not the same as saying I may publish.’