‘I’m helping to host, yes. I only hope they remember they have homes to go to after they’ve drunk Walter’s brandy. And, no.’ She grimaced. ‘You wouldn’t be impressed by any of my uncle’s cronies.’

‘I dunno. An easy life wi’ a maid to empty the grate sounds right up my street.’ Louisa paused. ‘I’m not sayin’ owt against thee, Harriet. I know it’s a slog lookin’ after this lot.’

‘Don’t be silly. I might be trapped in these four walls, but I thank my stars I’ve got you to give me all the gossip of the town.’

‘And I shan’t let you down, neither.’

The two women smiled at each other.

‘Shall I do the honours wi’ her ladyship’s bucket?’

‘Oh! I forgot. I left it at the foot of the stairs.’

Images of the boys upsetting the contents flooded her mind – they were all three of them like giraffes with no idea of the length of their limbs – but Louisa was already on her feet.

‘Stay put. Back in two shakes.’

Harriet rested her head in her hands and gazed at the whorls and knots ingrained in the wooden tabletop. When Louisa tramped through with the commode bucket and let herself out through the back door, drops of rain blew in on a gust of wind that fluttered the net curtain covering the kitchen window. Somewhere in the depths of the house a door slammed and Harriet jumped. Perhaps she should ask her aunt’s doctor for a draught of elixir.

‘Where’s your beautiful smile?’ Uncle Walter had said the other day. ‘Nobody wants to see a mardy face on a pretty girl.’ The implication that Harriet would have to try harder than most to present a figure of womanly loveliness, afflicted as she was, was unspoken. And, perhaps, absent. She should not assume every reference to her physical appearance had to do with her deformity.

Louisa blew back in and dropped the bucket in the kitchen sink with a clatter.

‘It’s silin’ it down!’ she said. The drops of water in her blonde curls just made her hair look even more lustrous than usual. Harriet always felt ungainly next to Louisa; too tall, too skinny, all elbows and knees. Louisa had rounded edges where Harriet was pointed. At least, she could take comfort from the fact that her road was laid out before her. She’d raise Aunt Polly’s children, look after her aunt and uncle in their dotage. Her brother would marry and have children and she would be an aunt who would love her nieces and nephews as much as she loved little Alice. James would furnish a room in his townhouse for her, or perhaps provide a cosy cottage on a tranquil riverbank where she would read and embroider and practise the piano. Hers was a secure existence. She was luckier than most, she knew that. It was only that her foot ached so today, and the pain always worsened in the night so her sleep would be restless again. She had learned as a small child to hide the discomfort. She wanted no more attempts made on a cure, the memory of irons caging her leg from toe to pelvis still there if she chose to dig for them. She did not.