They walked out of the room and along the jade green corridor, past the grand portraits of long-dead Crichton-Dalrymples and down the wooden staircase to the first floor. The volume increased like it was being turned on a dial. A woman in an ivory satin dress skittered past; she was wearing a white-blonde wig and had plucked every single last hair from her brows; her mouth was shaped into a tiny pucker. There was something . . . extreme about her look. Effie realized a moment later that the woman was being chased by a man with a moustache and a cane and hat, and a funny wobbling walk.

Effie stared as the pair laughed hysterically and made their way down the corridor, past the stone stairs at the other end. They disappeared momentarily from view but Effie knew they would have to come back this way in a moment, for the corridor on this floor only led to the chapel – and they didn’t look like they wanted to pray. Effie wished she could ask Jenny what it was about them that had been so strange but she had already gone too, slipping down the servants’ stairs to the corridors on the ground floor.

Steeling herself, Effie turned into the pewter corridor – it was her favourite part of the house; a run of vaulted ceilings adorned with delicate stencils in celery green, duck-egg blue and shell pink, highlighted with dots of gold – and she made her way across to the tapestry room. She walked to the sound of her satin shoes click-clacking on the floors, catching sight of her reflection in one of the round windows as she passed. She stopped, stunned by the sight of herself in motion. It was one thing to sit before a mirror and be presented with a static image, like a painting, but to see herself moving, in these clothes, through this house . . . She had never had any awareness of how she looked before these past few weeks, but she could scarcely believe she was her. No matter that her heart was clattering beneath her ribs; that wasn’t what the reflection showed. The young dark-haired woman staring back was beautiful and poised and Effie suddenly realized who it was she had become – even if it was only for tonight, she was the girl with the hand-drawn book, who wore silk dresses and lived in the house of music. There was no indication of her former self, dressed in patched clothes and huddled in the dark in the featherstore. She put a hand to her hair, to her lips, and slowly smiled. Perhaps she really could walk in there and belong . . .?