There were times I felt light as an empty sack blowing on a pavement.

The ladies spilled in and out like dropped grain, swarmed the table, fiddling counters, biting down on them as they puzzled over their endless games of whist. There was one, Hephzibah Elliot, I noticed most of all. She watched, too. She wore short-sleeved dresses, a veil pinned to her hat by a jet pin that gripped her skull like a tiny hand. I disliked her on sight. Her heavy brow, and her small eyes, and the way they followed Madame above her teacup. She had the shape of a hand-barrow and a voice to match. ‘Oh, Hep is not at all handsome,’ Madame said once. ‘But she does have very handsome thoughts.’ I had to chew my lip so as not to laugh.

There was something alike about all those ladies. Silk dresses carved to neat little figures, voices fluttering like hand-cloths. Only Hep Elliot was different, in her shapeless gowns. As I watched them, down would come the feeling that I’d walked up to a window and was peering at them through glass. I knew I’d never belong. And then I saw all of it sharp as knives, and it hurt my eyes.

Every part of me ached with wanting things I could not have. I wanted the courage of the mad. To declare myself. To her. As if mine were the kind of suit that could ever be spoken out loud.

Sometimes I felt a pulse of anger too, I’ll confess it.

Relentless as a heart.

Anger was what took me to her door. Anger and want, equal as butter and sugar in a pound cake. I took the rushlight and slipped along the third-floor corridor, laid my ear against the wood. I fancied I heard whispering through it. I listened for the smallest creak to tell me where she was. Was that a footstep at her desk? Was that a cabinet door banging against the wall? Was she leaning on the window sill? Did she lie awake? As restless as me? I wanted to call out to her through the wood. I wanted to say something. I wanted to go through that door. Perhaps she was calling out to me! Perhaps that was the whisper I’d heard: Frannie! Frannie! But the thought of knocking, moreover of what she might say if I did, filled me with dread. Terror in my throat thick as meat.

I heard footsteps striking the marble downstairs, and Linux crying out below. I took a deep breath and fumbled my voice down over the railing, telling her I thought I’d heard a disturbance at Madame’s door. ‘At the door?’ she repeated, as if it were some African word. ‘The only disturbance up there is you.’

MISS HEPHZIBAH ELLIOT, sworn

Mr Jessop: Did you know the prisoner?

A. Not really. I usually saw her in company. Sometime in March last year, Meg began to bring her everywhere. She never said much. Her eyes never left her mistress. She watched her, always, wherever she was in any room.