Agnes touches a hand to the grandfather clock as she leaves. Papa would have helped her through this mess. In fact, Papa would have stopped all of it from happening in the first place. He was the only one who could keep Constance in check. She would never have dared to seduce Montague while their father breathed.

The stairs wail like the miserable damned as she climbs them and goes not to her studio, as she said she would, but to her bedchamber. The curtains have not been drawn back in days and discarded linen lies in heaps upon the floor. It is starting to resemble the benighted little house on Walcot Street more every day.

Agnes closes the door, sits carefully upon the bed and smooths her skirts out around her. Only then does she allow herself the luxury of tears.

Her sorrow will not fit inside the small space she has allotted to it. It is not like a fish that grows to the size of its pond; the more she tries to squash it down, the more it threatens to burst out and consume everything.

How she wishes she had a confidant to talk to. Miss Grayson from church and even gossipy old Miss Betts circle through her desperate mind, but they cannot be trusted with secrets. Agnes enjoyed the company of her peers in her younger days – where have they all gone? It was not easy to keep friends, with Constance as a sister. Her jealousy became a problem. Agnes’s playmates would suffer ‘mishaps’, mysterious nips and burns until they eventually stopped calling at the house altogether.

The only female Agnes has spoken to with something approaching honesty since the Accident is young Pearl. Constance would have been jealous of her, too.

Of course there is still Simon, infallible Simon, but she can hardly weep for Montague’s fate in front of him.

The tears show no sign of abating. Her head throbs with the pressure of them. She places a handkerchief over her mouth to stifle the sound of her gulps. Did Montague ever think of her with regret? He died a lingering death overseas. There would have been enough time for him to write her a line and say goodbye – but of course, he had no guarantee that she was still living in Orange Grove. He did not know about Cedric, or about the Accident. He had been so ashamed of himself that he had cut off all connections. He seemed to believe that the only way for the family to carry on was if he disappeared entirely.

Agnes never had the chance to say that she forgave him. She was hurt, of course, and incandescent with rage for a time. But he was not the first person unable to fight against Constance’s will. She had a way of making you do things.