Without much suggestion from me, despite my hopes for it, it is she who proposes that we marry – each other. I say if we are to do it, it should be done properly, an unbreakable commitment. Perhaps that will set my mind at rest, if we commit in the sight of God. She assumes my answer come summer will be yes. Why wouldn’t it be?

Miss Lister

She says if we were to marry it would need to be binding, the same as a marriage; we will declare on the Bible and take the sacrament together. A summer wedding.

Miss Walker

I wonder, if men are not allowed to be wed to each other and are even hung for it, then it must be the same between women?

Miss Lister

Someone has got into her head. She’ll make herself ill again. I speak with authority to reassure her.

Miss Walker

She brings up Mr Ainsworth again. She wants me to say that it’s not my fault, that I can move on, but the words do not come to me and I start to cry all over again, as if everything happened just yesterday rather than many years past.

Miss Lister

I have begun to lose respect for her. Can I honestly wait for the break of summer for a decision when it seems plain she can never decide? Thank God my mind is not like hers.

Miss Walker

Then she shakes me and looks me right in the eyes and says we all have our regrets and sorrows. We just have to live with them. I ask her what sorrows and regrets could the perfect Miss Lister ever have? And she replies, I killed a man.

Miss Lister

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I know it is not the sort of sentence you can retract. As Miss Walker sits there, her eyes red from the tears of her own sorrows, and her mouth now wide with shock, I know I must tell the truth as she has done. My confession has burned inside me. I haven’t even committed it to my diary in my secret code, but now it has come tumbling out. With the saying of it, I selfishly feel some relief. But of all the people I could have shared it with, is meek little Miss Walker the one to tell something that could lead me to the gallows? But it is said now. I certainly have some explaining to do.