‘Well, I never did! Whatever has got into you, Agnes? I might have expected this behaviour from Constance, but not you.’

She closes her eyes, tries to fetch enough air into her lungs. It is not Mamma’s fault.

‘Forgive me, Mamma, but they really do print such trash these days. I will see if I can stretch to a magazine. The World of Fashion … But first you should eat. Where’ – she casts a quick, unhopeful look about the parlour – ‘where is Cedric? I thought we were to play backgammon. He is not out and about this early, surely?’

Mamma plaits her fingers. ‘Ah, little Cedric. He’ll be begging ginger lemonade from the soda manufactory or spying on the girls in Mrs Box’s seminary. A wandering spirit, that boy. Just like his father – aye, and his grandfather before him.’

Agnes flinches. Her mother does not observe it, for she is gazing into the past now, her eyes filmed over.

‘Lord, how he did drag me about, that papa of yours! If it wasn’t Gibraltar it was the West Indies, or some other godforsaken place at the ends of the earth. You are lucky he took his half pay after Constance was born. Who knows where we should have ended up otherwise?’

A burn at the core of her chest, which has nothing to do with her bad lungs. ‘I should have liked to see the West Indies,’ Agnes replies softly.

‘Oh no you would not! That life would not suit you at all. The heat is like the bowels of Hell. It took all morning just to get a hint of curl in my hair. Then I could barely eat. I lost so much weight, I had to take in every one of my gowns, I remember.’

Strange how Mamma can recall details like this, but not the pain her daughter has endured; how all Agnes’s hopes of happiness were once centred on a ship cutting through the surf and ports in foreign climes.

‘Speaking of gowns, I had better put mine on. I shall be back presently.’

The stair treads yawn beneath her feet. Agnes echoes them, rubbing the grit from her eyes. As she stumbles onto the landing, her shoulder knocks against a frame hanging on the wall. There is a crash followed by the dreaded tinkle of broken glass.

‘Agnes?’

‘It is nothing, Mamma.’

Stooping down, she turns the oval frame face up. Shards of glass fall to the floor. Behind them, unmarked, rests the profile of Constance.

This is the only shade of her they keep on display in the house. It is blind, without the eyelash Agnes now cuts in as a matter of course, but it remains one of her best pieces. There is a depth to it that conjures up the woman herself.