‘Doesn’t matter. I’m busy today. Someone’s got to fix that front door, ain’t they?’

‘Please! This will just take a few minutes. I’d be so grateful. You’re the best mesmerist there is. Only you can make him well again, Myrtle.’

‘Is that so? I thought you knew better than me, these days.’ She folds her rag over to find a clean bit. ‘Why don’t you ask your new friend Miss Darken to help you?’

So it’s like that: she’s still not forgiven.

Flaming with sorrow and outrage, she stomps into the kitchen. On the table is a jar of jam and an empty box of matches. There’s no water to cool her forehead – they used it all yesterday cleaning Father’s jaw. She can’t quench her thirst either, because Myrtle hasn’t fetched any ale from the Northgate Brewery. She’s sure that’s deliberate. Myrtle wants Pearl to suffer, and Father too. She still thinks they killed Mother on purpose.

Pearl tries to steady her breathing but fails. She can’t take any more of this: closed doors everywhere she turns. If one more person tells her no, she will scream.

Father will get better. He must.

Myrtle and the doctor think they’re so clever, with all their learning, but it’s Pearl everyone comes crying to, wanting answers. Pearl’s the one with the power and she needs to use it. If she can talk for people who are dead, she can surely cure the ‘fuzzy jaw’?

Her eyes range the surfaces, fall upon the biggest, sharpest kitchen knife.

And she knows what she has to do.

CHAPTER 30

Something has happened.

Agnes felt it the minute the crystal ball cracked. She does not know if Pearl has unleashed some dark entity in her distress, or whether this is the presence she has sensed building for so long: the one that follows her through the streets, teasing closer and closer at every séance.

But it is here now.

She sits in her studio, hugging the book of duplicates to her chest. The abbey bells throb, strong as a pulse, through the magpies’ chitter and cackle.

One by one, the framed silhouettes drop from the wall to crash beside her feet. Bronzed work, painting on wax, hollow-cuts. No visible hand touches them. For years they have hung there, undisturbed, but now they smash onto the floor and hatch as the profiles break free of their glass.

There is a slow malevolence to the destruction; first one frame, then the next, each dislodged without a hurry. Whatever it is, it is working its way towards the centre of the room.