Her relationship with Cecil had been so consuming that while she was at the Whitstones’ she’d barely had a moment to miss the life she’d led before. But now her life in Tunbridge Wells was what came to mind most often. She missed her father: his mild temperament and small kindnesses, how they’d chat for hours in the evening, watching the fire settle as rain pattered the roof tiles. She’d adjust the blanket on his legs and he’d read to her from Wordsworth or Shakespeare, lines she now mouthed to herself as she lay in the small space she’d carved out on the cell floor:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, / The earth, and every common sight, / To me did seem / Apparelled in celestial light . . .

We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.

When she closed her eyes, Evangeline found comfort in recalling even the small routines she used to complain about: heating a kettle to wash dishes in the sink, scooping coal from the bin to keep the fire going in the stove, heading to the bakery with her shopping basket on a cold February morning. Ordinary pleasures now seemed unimaginable: black tea sweetened with sugar in the afternoon, with apricot cake and custard; her mattress at the rectory, stuffed with goose feathers and cotton; the soft muslin gown and cap she wore to sleep; calfskin gloves, dark brown, with mother-of-pearl buttons, molded to the shape of her hands through years of wear; her wool cape with its rabbit-fur collar. Watching her father at his writing desk as he worked on his weekly sermons, his tapered fingers holding a quill. The smell of the streets of Tunbridge Wells when it rained in the spring: wet roses and lavender, horse manure and hay. Standing in a meadow at dawn, watching a lemony sun rise in a wide-open sky.

She remembered something her father had told her as he knelt at the hearth one evening, building a fire. Holding up the cut end of a log, he showed her the rings inside, explaining that each one marked a year. Some were wider than others, depending on the weather, he said; they were lighter in winter and darker in summer. All of them fused together to give the tree its solid core.

Maybe humans are like that, she thought. Maybe the moments that meant something to you and the people you’ve loved over the years are the rings. Maybe what you thought you’d lost is still there, inside of you, giving you strength.

The prisoners had nothing to lose, which meant they had no shame. They blew their noses into their sleeves, picked lice from each other’s hair, crushed fleas between their fingers, kicked slithering rats out of the way without a second thought. They swore at the slightest provocation, sang bawdy songs about randy butchers and barmaids with swollen bellies, and openly inspected their monthly rags, stained dark with blood, to assess whether they could use them again. They had strange scabbed rashes and phlegmy coughs and sores oozing with neglect. Their hair was matted with dirt and vermin, their eyes bloodshot and runny with infection. Many spent their days hacking and spitting, a telltale sign, according to Olive, of gaol fever.