Kitty shrugged. ‘Because that’s what she wishes me to call her,’ she said. ‘To be honest, I think she is rather vain. Perhaps she just doesn’t want people to know that she has a daughter my age?’

‘How very odd.’ Maggie perched on the end of the bed as Kitty added underwear, and soap, eau de cologne and rose-scented creams to the nightdress.

‘Oh, and you’ll need a hairbrush,’ Kitty said. ‘Luckily I have two, so one can be for you.’

That final kindness was Maggie’s undoing and suddenly tears began to course down her cheeks.

‘Ah, you poor thing!’ Kitty was beside her in a second and put her arm about her. ‘Do you want to talk about whatever is troubling you?’

She felt Maggie stiffen; she clearly wasn’t used to being shown affection and for a moment Kitty thought that she wasn’t going to answer her, but then she choked out, ‘I don’t think I can talk about it. It’s too horrible and if you knew what had happened, you might not want to know me.’

Kitty said gently, ‘I think I might already know. Sunday worried about you dreadfully when you left us, and I believe she always regretted letting you go. Mrs Dawes was very strict with you, wasn’t she? You never seemed to be happy whenever we bumped into you. Sunday and Tom always felt that she was keeping you away from us deliberately. It was almost as if she didn’t want you to have any friends. But whatever has happened, I would never turn my back on you.’

Maggie blinked through her tears. ‘You wouldn’t?’

‘Never!’ Kitty said vehemently, and felt the girl relax slightly.

Maggie was battling with her conscience but the secret she had been forced to keep was eating away at her and she longed to speak to someone about it. Until now there had been no one she could trust. Would Kitty be different?

For some moments, she sat lost in thought before stammering, ‘It – it wasn’t actually Mother that was the problem. It was Father.’ She gulped, then said in a tiny voice: ‘You see, he took my virginity.’

Chapter Twenty-Six

Kitty was so shocked and horrified that she was rendered temporarily speechless as she tried to digest what Maggie had just confided to her.

‘You see?’ Maggie sobbed even harder. ‘I told you it was horrible and that you wouldn’t want to know me. I’m dirty – soiled – nobody will ever want me now!’

‘No, no, you’re not!’ Kitty told her hotly. ‘It’s not you that’s dirty, it’s him. I can hardly believe it. He always seemed to be such a nice man. But when did this happen? Is this why you ran away?’

Maggie nodded. Strangely, now that she had confided in someone, she felt as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

‘It began when I was just a little girl,’ she said tremulously. ‘Father started to come to my room to read me a story on my nanny’s day off. Then after a while he started to … to … touch me.’ Colour flamed into her cheeks but she forced herself to go on. ‘He said that all daddies did that to their little girls, but that I mustn’t tell Mother or Nanny. After a time, I told him I didn’t like it and he got angry. He said that if I didn’t do as he said, the devil would come out of the mirror and get me in the night, and that it must always be our little secret. I believed him, and after that I used to hide under the covers when he left the room until it got light. Then when I was about ten years old he made me touch him …’ She shuddered at the memory.