‘Oh . . . no . . . I never can sleep at this time of day. It is a funny limbo hour, non? Neither morning nor night. This is how lonely death must be.’

The candle guttered out and I lit a spill from the fire, reached up to light it again. ‘Are you sure I shouldn’t fill the pan?’

She crooked her fingers into her hair, then pushed to her feet. ‘What I need is a drop more.’

‘What’s it like?’ I asked her, pulling knees to chest.

She paused with her hand on the cabinet. ‘What? Laudanum? Have you never . . . ? Well.’ She tilted her head. ‘I suppose most people think it must be dark and wicked. Pure pleasure. But it is more . . . the absence of pain.’ She turned her eyes towards me again. ‘Life makes each of us a kettle, boiling up and up and up. Imagine a gentle hand comes along and moves you off the flame. That is opium. It is . . . a gentle rowboat on black water. Sweet dreams.’

She laughed, embarrassed. ‘Still. One must be careful not to become like the ones who carry their vials at the theatre and in all the withdrawing rooms. After a time, the drug itself causes agonies nothing can relieve, not even the drug . . .’ She tipped the bottle back and swallowed. Turned, her eyes all glitter. ‘I have been thinking, you know, about the education you received. How fortunate you were. Not just a black, but a woman! You were given a chance many free women will never have.’

‘I don’t know if it was luck,’ I said. ‘Langton said he’d only trained me as one would a parrot.’

I heard his voice: You disgust me.

‘Oh. Odious man,’ she said, and shivered. She set the bottle back in the cabinet, stretched her arms. I heard the crack of bones. ‘Truly. You are so much better here. With me.’

She nodded, as if something had been decided. I pushed to my feet, needing to turn away. Decided I’d fill the warming pan with the last of the coals. I went to the fire and poked some up, held the pan with one of her towels and crossed to the bed. Her eyes followed me. I knelt to tuck it under the coverlet, and then she came beside me, kneeling also.

She leaned close. ‘We are like two playmates in the nursery saying our bedtime prayers together. And now that you are here, I will “lie down and sleep in peace”. ’

The end of her sleeve whispered against my wrist. She lifted my hand, turned it over. Peered at the lines in my palm. Words rattled to a stop inside my head. It was more terrifying than my dream, and my wrist started to quake, so I pulled my hand away, pretended to tuck the pan deeper under, kept it pinned beneath the coverlet.

My breath clutched at my chest and I didn’t dare look up. The drapes were open, navy walls lit by the moon. Many minutes passed in silence. She leaned forward, seemed to catch herself, then came forward again. She turned my face and pressed her lips to mine. So soft. I could hardly feel it. I pressed closer. The longing of iron for a lodestone. I felt a prickle in my hand, like needles in flesh. I lifted it, reached for her face –