Compared to the twilight of the widow’s parlour, the autumn day in Queen Square now seems perfectly bright. Agnes dawdles homewards, glad to have put Mr Boyle’s death to rest. Her art is innocent. She has done nothing amiss – although she has been made to feel like an impertinent beggar woman.

She pulls the brim of her bonnet low to shield her face from passers-by. After Mrs Boyle’s cold look, she does not want to meet the eyes of the square’s other haughty residents.

It is not often she misses Constance, but she feels as if she would take comfort in speaking to her sister now. Constance would tell Agnes how little store she should set by the opinion of such dullards as the Boyles. She might even claim that the murderers had done a public service by putting an end to Mr Boyle.

Horrible, unforgivable things like that.

Still, they would make Agnes feel better.

CHAPTER 4

Pearl doesn’t remember living in London, and she doesn’t see a lot of Bath either. There’s the parlour, the kitchen and the hallway, plus three other small rooms, which they use as bedchambers.

Sometimes, lodgers arrive and live in the rooms upstairs, but they never stay for long. The landlord won’t let Pearl and Myrtle up there. They’ve only paid to rent the ground floor of the house. He might be hiding treasure or caged tigers above them for all she knows. She ought to check, but she’s too afraid.

Today is market day, when she ventures to the front door to get some air. Her chair rests just inside the threshold and an old coal-scuttle bonnet screens her eyes from the worst glare of the daylight.

Her glimpses of the world outside are slight, like a tongue darting between the lips and slipping back in again. She sees cows shambling over the cobbles, their tails swishing at flies. A mass of black bricks and chimney stacks. Wafts of steam from Ladymead Penitentiary, where Myrtle sends their washing.

It’s the smells Pearl enjoys the most. Even the straw and the dung. There’s something alive about the scents in the street. They make her sit up and take notice.

Myrtle’s already been out into the throng and returned with a punnet of blackberries for their favourite jam. Now she stands in the kitchen, behind Pearl, pulling them apart and pulping them.

Pearl turns and watches her sister. It’s at times like these she tries to imagine Myrtle’s father, Private West. He’d be a tall man, definitely. Probably handsome too, because he was Mother’s first husband, and she married him at sixteen. You wouldn’t marry that young if it weren’t for the wildest romance.