And other things, like how sorry I was. Sorry she had been born too soon and had slipped from me, and sorry she could not get to know Joan and Ma. Sorry we did not fetch the Baxters to help us. Sorry I had been so stupid as to try to keep her a secret. At some point the kerchief comes loose from my neck and folk stare at my rope-bruise, which is not much of a bruise any more, but more of a mark; but they do not cry ‘Half-Hanged Maggie’ at me, so mibbie it is not so apparent now, how I came to be marked as such.

It is a long trudge from the anatomists’ place to Aunt Jenever’s, heavy with tears and sorrow and relief, and I feel a passing of sorts as I do it, from Half-Hanged Maggie – the person I was for a while – to just plain Maggie; but no longer the girl I once was. Now I am a bereaved mother, finally allowed to grieve.

Can you believe this? When I get back to Aunt Jenever’s Gin Shop, which must be a full three hours after I left this morning, Dorothy and Cornelius are still sitting together at the same table, in rapt conversation. Cornelius is looking at Dorothy as though she is the only woman in the world, and she is flirting like mad with him. But it is not the silly-goose flirting I have come to expect from her, all fluttering eyelashes and tossing of curls, but more of an open sort of a way with him. She wears no rouge, and the morning sunlight streams though the window and makes a play on her skin, showing up her shadows and her flaws, but she looks like she could not care less, a smile on her lips and her eyes flashing with life.

My goodness, I think, they are falling in love.

‘She is back!’ cries Dorothy, putting her hands out to me, and I sit down beside them like a little gooseberry, taking care to put my precious parcels on the next table, where I can have them in plain sight. She puts her arm around me. ‘Where on earth have you got to all morning? We were just saying we are peckish for a spot of late lunch, and Cornelius here knows a place that does all different sorts of game pies.’

‘Pigeon, rabbit, hare – you name it, Mistress Dickson,’ he says. ‘Down by the White Hart Inn. And all the condiments you could imagine too.’

Dorothy looks brightly at me. ‘Fancy it, my dear? We could share a pigeon pie.’

‘You two go, but not me,’ I reply. I have no wish to go to the White Hart Inn, for that is the place near the gallows. ‘I must get back home to Fisherrow, for they’ll have no idea what has happened to me.’