Alice turned to see the girl from outside manhandling her luggage through the doorway, awkwardly trying to hold open the heavy doors with one foot while wrapping both arms around a trunk. At Geryon’s call, she dropped it with a thump and straightened up.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Show Alice to her room, would you? Mr Black can bring her bags.’

Mr Black’s lip twitched, and he shot a glare at Alice, but he said nothing.

Emma hurried over to Alice, lowering her head respectfully. ‘Of course, sir,’ she said. ‘Follow me, miss.’

Emma started up the stairs, setting a rapid pace, and Alice had to scurry to keep up through a bewildering maze of corridors, T-junctions, and wood-panelled passages. Most of the house was dark, with only one gaslight out of three or four burning, but Emma seemed to have no trouble. Eventually they found another staircase, steeper and uncarpeted. At the top was a short corridor with a line of closely spaced doors, the first of which was open.

‘This is your room,’ Emma said, stepping aside. She kept her eyes on the floor.

It was a servant’s room, Alice thought, with space for a bed and a chest of drawers but very little else. A massive leaded-glass window occupied much of the far wall, and a cheerless grey rug covered the floor.

‘Toilets are down the stairs. Left, then right, then left again,’ Emma went on, in a singsong tone, as though reciting something she’d memorized. ‘Breakfast is at seven in the dining hall, lunch at noon, dinner at six.’ She went silent, as though she’d run out of things to say, like a record player reaching the end of its groove.

‘Emma,’ Alice said. ‘That’s your name, right?’

‘Yes, miss.’

‘Alice is fine.’

‘Yes, miss.’

‘I mean,’ Alice said carefully, ‘you can call me Alice. Not “miss”.’

‘I . . .’ The girl paused, then gave a little bob of the head, automatic as a well-oiled mechanism. ‘As you say, miss.’

Another awkward silence.

Alice cleared her throat. ‘Did you want something else?’ she said, trying to be polite.

Emma blinked, placidly. ‘No, miss.’

Alice looked at her more carefully. She was skinny, taller than Alice, but she hunched her shoulders and kept her head low. Her plain face was scattered with freckles, and her mouse-brown hair was tied in a tail at the back of her neck. Her cast-down eyes gave Alice the overpowering urge to check and see if her shoelaces were untied or her dress unbuttoned.

‘I mean,’ Alice said, abandoning politeness in favour of making herself understood, ‘why are you still standing there?’

This question seemed to perplex Emma. Her forehead wrinkled, and after a moment she said, ‘Nobody told me where to go next, miss.’

‘Could you fetch some things for me?’

‘Yes, miss.’

Again, the silence, as though the conversation had fallen into a pothole.