But she couldn’t just stay there all the time either. She couldn’t just let this cold run its course. Dot had insisted on staying with her, leaving only to go to work. She’d been tireless, attentive, a perfect friend. A true sister.

But her hands had been shaking that morning, and Margot had caught her looking up the street toward her own flat. If she didn’t go home soon, she’d . . . Well, Margot didn’t know what exactly would happen. But she knew it wouldn’t be good.

So she’d stirred the last of her honey into a cup of tea, told her throat it would be better by midday, and dressed for work. She’d resolutely not looked at that closed door to the little cupboard of a room. She would have to open it eventually. Go through the lifeless possessions trapped inside. Decide what to keep, what to get rid of, what to do with the room.

But not today.

Lady Hambro sighed. “You are not alone, Margot. You have your brother and his family. Why not spend a few days with them? Reminisce together, laugh together, cry together. It would do you good.”

Margot’s answer was to pick up her pencil and a fresh sheet of paper. She had no pneumatically delivered tube of papers before her, but she scratched a few numbers onto the page anyway. Lady Hambro wouldn’t know that they were nonsense—nothing but a theorem that had proven unworkable.

In her mind’s eye, she saw the look Maman would give her for ignoring someone trying to help.

Margot didn’t need help. She didn’t need to reminisce. Or to cry. And the idea of laughing—that didn’t even deserve a mental response, much less a vocal one. She just needed to be. And she could do that best here.

Lady Hambro sighed again and straightened, removing her hand from Margot’s shoulder after a matronly pat. “All right. If this is what you need to do, then so be it. But do look after your health, Margot dear. You’ll do no one any good if you collapse in a fever—and we certainly don’t want the rest of Room 40 coming down with it again.”

“I’m on the mend,” she said again. Even added what she hoped looked like a smile. Faintly. Perhaps. If the lady had a good imagination. “No fever, I promise you.” Not like That Day. The seventh of November.

Eleventh month. Seventh day.

Eighteen.