But at last, Mrs Lynch finds her voice. ‘How extraordinary! You did not tell me, my dear Miss West, that she was an albino child.’

A blush stings Pearl’s cheeks.

‘Didn’t I? I must have forgotten,’ shrugs Myrtle, who forgets nothing. ‘But I did tell you she was always upstairs, ill, when we performed our previous séances here.’ She flicks a curl over her shoulder and raises Pearl to her feet. ‘Pearl’s been delicate since birth. I thought it was because her body’s different, but—’

‘But now we know better,’ Mrs Lynch finishes sagely. ‘How often it has been remarked that the Gift manifests itself after a period of severe illness!’

‘Indeed, indeed,’ Mr Collins cuts in. ‘The Power always follows sickness and frequently comes to the gentler sex. The lower in status they are, the stronger they seem to grow. Deprivation, frustration and discontent: these are the grounds in which mediumship breeds.’

Pearl sees the rictus set into Myrtle’s cheeks. This prig insults them openly, in their own home. If she was braver, she would spark back. But she’s saving her strength for more important things.

At the last séance, she knew the name of the person she was summoning: Mr Boyle. This time, any ghost might come through. She shivers, feeling like the skin is shrinking on her bones.

The other woman, who looks like a facsimile of Mrs Lynch, pushes forward and lifts a lock of Pearl’s hair from the shoulder of her gown. ‘Look! Pure white! Even paler than Florence’s. She might have come from the spirit realm itself, Mamma.’

‘Well,’ Myrtle considers, ‘maybe she did. She was born with the cord wrapped around her neck, you know. Not a whiff of breath in her. It were me what brought her back to life.’

They all gasp.

Myrtle’s eagerness to share the tale breaks through her false voice. No one seems to care.

She tells them the story, but there’s one part she leaves out: she doesn’t mention how their mother slipped away while Myrtle was busy reviving Pearl. None of the Society will know that it was all Pearl’s fault; that if she hadn’t been a distraction, someone might have saved Mother.

But Pearl remembers. She’s heard it enough times.

Myrtle pats her on the shoulder. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Let’s sit down and have some tea.’

She guides Pearl to the table, her hand in the small of her back. When they sit down, she’s careful to perform the introductions again, more thoroughly, giving Pearl the names of Mr Stadler, Mr Collins, Mrs Lynch and Miss Lynch.

Although they’ve all come to consult Pearl, they don’t seem to want her. Myrtle pulls their gaze like a giant magnet.