‘And your wedding ring,’ he stipulated. ‘You will not deny your marriage.’

‘Father, he has denied it every day.’

‘Daughter, he is your husband.’

I sighed. ‘Very well. But we can go, can we? And at once?’

He rested his hand on my face. ‘Child, I thought that you had a good husband who loved you and you would be happy.’

I gritted my teeth so the tears did not come to my eyes and make him think that I might soften, that I might still be a young woman with a chance of love. ‘No,’ I said simply.

* * *

It was not an easy matter, stripping down the press again and moving it from the yard. I had only my new gowns and linen to take with me, Father had a small box of his clothes, but we had to move the entire stock of books and manuscripts and all the printing equipment: the clean paper, the barrels of ink, the baskets of bookbinding thread. It took a week before the porters had finished carrying everything from the Carpenters’ house to the new shop, and for every day of that week my father and I had to eat our dinner at a table in silence while Daniel’s sisters glared at me with aghast horror, and Daniel’s mother slammed down the plates with utter contempt as if she were feeding a pair of stray dogs.

Daniel stayed away, sleeping at his tutor’s house, coming home only for a change of clothes. At those times I made sure that I was busy with my father out the back, or packing up books under the shop counter. He did not try to argue with me or plead with me and, wilfully, I felt it proved that I was right to leave him. I felt that if he had loved me he would have come after me, asked me again, begged me to stay. I willed myself to forget his stubbornness and his pride, and I made very sure to keep my thoughts from the life we had promised ourselves when we had said we would become the people we wanted to be and not be tied by the rules of Jew, or Gentile, or the world.

I had found a little shop at the south city gate: an excellent site for travellers about to leave Calais and travel through the English Pale to venture into France. It was the last chance they would have to buy books in their own language, and for those who wanted maps or advice about travelling in France or in the Spanish Netherlands we carried a good selection of travellers’ tales, mostly fabulous, it must be said, but good reading for the credulous. My father already had a reputation inside the city and his established customers soon found their way to the new premises. Most days he would sit in the sun outside the shop on one of the stools and I would work inside, bending over the press and setting type, now that there was no-one to scold me for getting ink on my apron.