But, as Mary was beginning to learn, that was the thing about being a child: the exact moment one got used to one’s own situation and learned to treat it as normal, was always the very same moment that the adults decided to throw all of it up in the air.

And at last, just on the cusp of her thirteenth birthday, came the moment when everything changed.

CHAPTER X

The Replacement Mother – or ‘the Mother’, as the Knatchbull children would say with a smirk once they mastered the great art of irony – was hardly the one they would have chosen. The differences between Annabella Knatchbull and Fanny Knight were so stark that to even consider the latter was to make a mockery of the maternal ideal. Where the first was plump and dimpled and laughing, the second was long, hard, pious – so pious – and bony. Where Mrs Knatchbull adored every one of her darlings; those very same darlings, as they were made only too aware, left the soon-to-be Lady Knatchbull a tiny bit cold.

So the idea that their father might wilfully choose to marry this creature struck his offspring as barely credible. And when it turned out that not only had she interviewed this Miss Knight for the very position, but she had actually given the appointment her blessing, Mary Dorothea could not have been more surprised.

Two weeks before that great revelation, the children were still at bliss in their ignorance, and allowed to run wild.

And on 15 August, they were flying across the lawn towards the slope that led down to the lake, with their feet bare and dirty, and clothing dishevelled.

‘Hurry!’ Norton cried in something between a yell and a whisper. ‘You can’t let them see us!’

He was way out in front, the next two boys in age closing in from behind. Mary was struggling to keep up, to her shame. She passed the small ridge where the land fell away steeply – the point, they had established, at which they could no longer be seen from the windows – and stopped for a moment, to catch her sharp breath.

How were the boys so much faster than her, when she was the eldest? It could only be school, she supposed. Stupid school. At hers, running was forbidden; at theirs, encouraged. She bent over, put a hand on each knee, waited for her heart to stop banging, began to rage at the world. Then came a small voice from behind her: ‘Wait for me, the Others! Oh, do wait for me!’ And she turned just as John’s little legs gave way beneath him and he fell to the ground.