Then I turned again to Rosfrith’s desk. The Times of London gave the women in Winson Green more column space. Tilda wasn’t one of them; not this time, I thought. Charlotte Marsh was the daughter of artist Arthur Hardwick Marsh. Laura Ainsworth’s father was a respected school inspector. Mary Leigh was the wife of a builder. This was how the women were defined.

Bondmaid. It came back to me then, and I realised that the words most often used to define us were words that described our function in relation to others. Even the most benign words—maiden, wife, mother—told the world whether we were virgins or not. What was the male equivalent of maiden? I could not think of it. What was the male equivalent of Mrs., of whore, of common scold? I looked out the window towards the Scriptorium, the place where the definitions of all these words were being bedded down. Which words would define me? Which would be used to judge or contain? I was no maiden, yet I was no man’s wife. And I had no desire to be.

As I read how the “treatment” was administered, I felt the ghost of a gag reflex and the pain of a tube scraping membrane from cheek to throat to stomach. It was a kind of rape. The weight of bodies holding you down, restraining your clawing hands and kicking feet. Forcing you open. At that moment, I wasn’t sure whose humanity was more compromised: the women’s or the authorities’. If the authorities’, then the shame was all of ours. What, after all, had I done to help the cause since Tilda left Oxford?

Rosfrith returned and we descended the stairs together. “Are you a suffragette, Rosfrith?” I asked.

“I don’t sneak out at night and smash windows, if that’s what you’re asking. I would prefer to call myself a suffragist.”

“I don’t think I could do what some women do.”

“Starve yourself or be a public nuisance?”

“Neither.”

Rosfrith paused on the staircase and turned to me. “I don’t think I could, either. And I can’t imagine…well, you’ve read the papers. But militancy isn’t the only way, Esme.”

Rosfrith resumed her descent and I followed, two steps behind. There was so much I wanted to ask her, but despite us both having grown up in the shadow of the Dictionary, I felt we were worlds apart.

We lingered a while in the kitchen doorway, watching the rain. “I’d best make a run for it,” Rosfrith said eventually. “But you’ve been wet enough for one day—wait here in the warm till it’s passed. We certainly can’t have you catching cold.” She opened her umbrella and trotted the distance between kitchen and Scriptorium.

Lizzie was crouched in front of the range. “Look at your face, Essymay. What on earth is wrong?”