I never envied my mother having myself as a child. I was precocious and probably very annoying – but all they had to do to be rid of me was send me to school like Samuel. Then one day when I was fourteen, with a wink, Father made it happen. It was Father who allowed me to walk with him, ride with him, shoot with him – but always in secret. I liked the freedoms he afforded me and that he respected my desires, but he was not a clever man either. I believe he thought of himself as my saviour, when I was merely biding my time to be rid of him. Them. All of them. My mother, father, Marian, Market Weighton and all its simpleness. School was an adventure and it was there I would finally meet someone my own age who was not ‘pretty’ either, but free and wild like me.

Eliza was exciting. I had thought I had been an awkward child, but her parents must have been run ragged. She objected to everything and had been sent to school to teach her some manners through brute force, for nothing else seemed to affect her. I had been cheeky to my parents and frustrated them, but Eliza worried hers. She worried me. She was not pretty, but she was beautiful in my eyes. She was the first person to kiss me. I didn’t care that one day she would ignore me and the next sneak into my bed. I didn’t care that she made wild plans for our futures but then dismissed me as below her, or too plain.

She had me on a string, but I didn’t mind. She taught me to kiss. Made me realise that girls could kiss girls. That I was not alone in how I felt.

She was locked away in an asylum.

Afterwards, I looked back upon our letters and wondered if I should have seen that her wildness was madness, that her passion was insanity. I feared that the only women that felt like I did would all be mad, or that I too was mad. I reassured myself that the letters were just letters between young girls in and out of love with each other. I reassured myself that the next person I loved would be better for me. Would love me back equally. Would not go insane.

I look across at Miss Walker as she giggles with Marian, the two of them without a care in the world.