She ambled to another drawer and pulled it open, picking up an open box with two small eggs inside – they were pale grey and covered with dark brown trails, like a spider that had walked through ink. They were labelled ‘Reed Bunting’, but she frowned, picking one up and examining it more closely – those would be smaller than these eggs; these were Yellow Bunting, she was sure.

She put the egg back, then scrutinized the ones in the next box. It was the same thing – Linnet eggs confused for Bullfinch.

She checked every box in the drawer, and the next. There were widespread cataloguing errors, not in every box but largely across the board.

‘Oh,’ she sighed, looking around the room and knowing she had found her start.

She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her socks and boots pulled off and left under the table, when the door suddenly opened. She had been cross-referencing the first lot of drawers for a couple of hours and was feeling stiff from the lack of movement. She’d never been so still for so long before.

The pale eyes of the maid she had sat opposite last night widened at the sight of her as Effie looked up from examining a sparrowhawk egg. It had been inexpertly blown and there was a faint crack to the bottom. It sat cradled in her palm like a bubble.

‘I didn’t know anyone was in here!’ the girl exclaimed.

Effie’s mouth parted but it was a moment before she spoke. ‘. . . I am.’

‘Yes. I can see.’ There was a short silence. ‘I came in to dust.’

‘Well, you still can. I won’t stop you,’ Effie said cautiously. She remembered all too well how the girl had turned away from her last night when she had been looking for a friendly face.

The maid hesitated, then stepped in with a decisive nod, as if she’d resolved something in her mind. She shut the door behind her and began tickling the surfaces with her feathered duster.

‘Why have you taken your boots off?’ she enquired after a few moments, reaching to catch a cobweb in an upper corner.

‘. . . I don’t like wearing them,’ Effie muttered.

For several long minutes, they co-existed in silence. Effie bent her head to continue examining the egg but she was aware of the girl’s stilted movements and she could almost feel the stirring of air as she kept looking over, intrigued by Effie’s quiet industry.

‘How can you tell them apart?’ the maid asked finally, her curiosity getting the better of her.

Effie kept her head down. ‘Practice,’ she murmured.

‘But how do you know them all?’ the maid persisted. ‘You couldn’t have had all these birds on your island, surely?’

‘No, but I read a lot of books too.’

‘You had bookshops over there?’