Lizzie looked through the kitchen window to make sure Mrs. Ballard wasn’t on her way back in, then she leaned closer to me. “She calls herself Mrs. ’cos it’s more respectable. A lot of old spinsters do it, ’specially if they’s in a position to order others about.”

I was too confused to ask any more questions.

It had come earlier than he’d expected, Da said, looking apologetic. It was called catamenia, and the process of shedding it was menstruation.

He reached for the sugar bowl and took great care to sprinkle a liberal amount on his porridge, even though it was already sweetened.

New words, but they made Da feel uncomfortable. For the first time in my life I felt unsure about my questions. We fell into a rare silence, with catamenia and menstruation hanging meaningless in the air.

I stayed away from the Scriptorium for two weeks. When I did return, I chose the quietest time. It was late afternoon, when Dr. Murray was visiting Mr. Hart at the Press and most of the assistants had gone home.

Only Da and Mr. Sweatman sat at the long table. They were preparing entries for the letter F, which meant they had to check the work of all the other assistants to make sure they matched Dr. Murray’s very particular style. Da and Mr. Sweatman knew the Dictionary abbreviations better than anyone.

“Come in, Esme,” said Mr. Sweatman as I peered round the Scriptorium door. “The big bad wolf has gone home.”

M words lived in pigeon-holes beyond the sight of the sorting table, and the words I wanted were crammed into a single pigeon-hole. They were already sorted under draft definitions. That is what Ditte spent so much of her time doing, and I wondered if I would recognise her hand on any of the top-slips.

There were so many words to describe the bleeding. Menstrue was the same as catamenia. It meant unclean blood. But what blood was clean? It always left a stain.

Four slips with various quotations were pinned to the word menstruate. The top-slip gave it two definitions: To discharge the catamenia and To pollute as with menstrual blood. Da had mentioned the first, but not the second.

Menstruosity was the condition of being menstruous. And menstruous had once meant horribly filthy or polluted.

Menstruous. Like monstrous. It came closest to explaining how I felt.

Lizzie had called it “The Curse.” She’d never heard of menstruation and laughed when I said it. “Probably a doctor’s word,” she’d said. “They have their own language, and it hardly ever makes sense.”

I took the volume with all the C words from its shelf and searched for curse.

One’s evil fate.