The churchyard heaves with sedan chairs and it does not take long to lose herself in the crowds. There is an array of hats: proud toppers, low caps that cover the eyebrows and an aviary of decorated bonnets. Beneath them, most of the faces look cold and frustrated by their lack of progress. Each individual has become absorbed into the swarm: moving slowly forward with one accord, like a colony of ants, none acting of their own volition.

As Agnes shuffles towards Cheap Street, the feet walking in front of her own slow and then come to a complete stop. Standing on tiptoes, she perceives some movement up ahead: dark plumes wafting to and fro. When the men remove their hats and hold them to their chests, the reason for all this congestion becomes apparent: a funeral cortege is slithering through the streets.

To meet a hearse is bad luck. Instinctively, Agnes’s hand seeks a button to hold for protection, but this is not her own gown and she cannot find one.

Respectful silence falls across the crowd. Only the clop of hooves echoes, like the beat of a failing heart. The deceased must have been a person of some standing.

A tall, thin mute heads the procession carrying a staff swathed in crêpe. There are so many black handkerchiefs fluttering behind him that they resemble wings, wafting the creature along. But of course that is not the real means of impetus: each carriage is pulled by a quartet of ebony horses crowned with ostrich feathers. On their backs, black-clad postilions ride without expression on the solemn road towards the grave.

The glass hearse displays a coffin suffocating in lilies. It travels feet first so that its occupant cannot look back and beckon others to follow.

Yet they do follow: mourners trail wearily behind on foot and the family creep along in their own elaborate carriage. They have not pulled the curtains for privacy. Each stricken and contorted countenance is on view.

Agnes knows she should lower her eyes in consideration of the family’s pain, but she does not; no one does. Everybody peers into the carriage, eager to see the mark death has left on those it passed so closely by.

One of the passengers is an upright gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair. A moustache obscures his mouth, but she can tell he is clenching it tight in an effort to appear composed. It only serves to make him look like he is being throttled. His lost, dazed children stare at the streets, and an older girl …

Agnes’s mouth falls open.

That girl.

The carriage crawls so slowly that she can take a second glance, and even a third, but none of them prove her wrong.