Carefully, she creeps past Mamma’s room and edges the door of Cedric’s bedchamber open. Dark shapes litter the floor: the toys and books she has bought him over the years. She is pierced by the contrast with the hovel that Pearl calls her room. Agnes suspects it was converted from a maid’s cabinet. There were certainly no ornaments or trinkets there, no little touches of decoration to make a child feel loved.

At least Agnes has given Cedric that.

She steps inside and navigates her way towards the small brass bed. The boy does not snore; he always sleeps quiet as a lamb. Even as an infant, she does not recall him wailing in the night; perhaps he did not dare to, with Constance as his mother.

She never wants him to feel fear like that again, or to feel unwanted because of Simon’s behaviour. Cedric may not have been conceived in wedlock, and his parents may have had no attachment to each other, but he is precious: the only gem snatched from all the misery.

Agnes reaches out a tender hand to place it upon the lump beneath the covers and watches it sink, slowly, to the mattress.

Nothing. There is nothing there.

The floor seems to pitch under her. Her hands tear at the covers, the pillow, even push the mattress from the frame as if her nephew might somehow be concealed beneath.

He is not.

‘Cedric!’

She starts to rip the sheets, hoping to find him hidden inside.

‘Cedric!’ she screams. ‘Ced!’

He could not have left the house: it is not possible, everything was locked up tight.

She drops to her knees with a cry. She can hardly see, can hardly breathe for tears, yet her hearing is not at fault for her ear catches a distinct rustle of paper as she pounds the shredded bedclothes.

Searching, she feels a torn page at the bottom of the mattress. A note.

She snatches it up and staggers over to the window. The note is rumpled and a little smudged, she cannot make out the words … Moaning with frustration, she pulls the window shutter back and leans greedily into the light from the street.

She feared she would read too late again, but this is worse.

That slanting hand, now as familiar as her own, has written:

You both belong to me.

CHAPTER 21

Pearl thought she’d got off pretty lightly, all things considered. No spewing or fainting. She’d been tired when Agnes left, but not too tired to sleep, and after a few minutes tossing and turning feeling guilty about disobeying Myrtle, she’d drifted off.

This morning is different, though.

She feels queer, like the food she ate for breakfast was an ember that’s tracked a fizzing path down her gullet, into her belly, where it’s setting light to everything.

Myrtle eyes her across the table. ‘You peaky?’