They could not do it, I thought, looking at them. Not even for an hour.

I was angry, yes. So would you have been; so would anyone. The real madness would have been if I had not been angry.

I looked and looked, but could not see her. Then footmen in bright livery came down the pavilion steps to hand out blankets and shawls and I turned away. The dark was split by one crack of light after another, until the whole sky was cleft by light, and the air filled with fireworks, battlefield noises that seemed they’d never end, ribbons of smoke, drifting like ladies in a park. I put my head down and walked quickly towards the lake, keeping myself hidden behind the stand of trees. Some distance away, I sat and curled my hands in the grass, took a slow breath. We are friends, then we are not. That is her world. I will never belong. It was what novels and romances had done to me. It was what she had done. The water lay ahead of me, wide and flat and black. I shut my eyes to it.

Footsteps behind me crunched like apples.

‘Here you are! I saw you slip away.’ She tramped over to me, dragging her skirts. She sat down, following my gaze out to the lake. The long path was lined with hedges. ‘In the morning we will see the primroses here,’ she said, ‘that we cannot see in the dark. There will soon be beds of lavender, by the boat-house, and later geraniums and peonies. You should see them. Well – you will see them! English spring is beautiful, you will see – the only thing that makes it worthwhile to live through the winter.’ She fell silent and I said nothing. ‘Sir Percy’s groundskeepers stock the lake with creels of fish to get ready for these parties, you know,’ she said. ‘Imagine. Pouring fish in just to hook them out! He might as well have them bring out the china service and line the dinner plates up on shore. When I first came to Longreach, I realized I had married into a family who could have anything they wanted. I was just one more thing poured out of a creel.’

She waited, again, for me to say something. I gave a jerk of my head, fumbling with my thoughts.

She lifted a hand to play with one of her diamond ear-bobs. ‘You are a woman of few words.’

I raised my eyes, braved the sight of her. ‘What did Mr Benham say?’

‘What?’

‘When you told him you were a fish.’

‘Oh,’ she said. She laughed. ‘I did not tell him that! I told him they might as well pour the fish from basket to plate and he said, “Now, Meg, where would be the sport in that?”’ She looked out across the water.

‘Won’t you be missed?’ I nodded towards the ballroom.

She leaned closer. ‘You are cross?’

‘I am nothing.’