The woman told her that her son had sold her to the filth man. The filth man had terrible breath and rotten teeth and talked about his dead dog. The filth man made her sleep in a coffin with a stone on her chest. She was waiting to take her son to hell.

‘Someone must go with him for he can’t take you,’ she said.

As is the way with dreams that fail to connect, Edith found herself once more alone, waiting in the dark for the dawn. She wondered if there was a road that would lead her to that other realm, where she would be able to walk with Demetrius to another end, to a new beginning.

‘I’m sorry if I’m too early,’ said Flora as she shook the snow from her skirt. ‘It’s truly treacherous out there. I can’t remember a winter when it’s snowed as much as this.’

Edith stoked the stove, put on the kettle to boil and waited for some warmth to return to the kitchen. As if she was a magician producing a rabbit from a hat, Flora took from her basket a creamy-white velvet dress. Edith couldn’t imagine being dressed like that every day. How would you do anything other than stand still and eat nothing? Flora told her about her clients, these women who belonged to a different world.

‘After this fitting,’ she said, ‘it’s just a matter of adding the finishing touches. I had some of these left over from another design…’ she showed Edith a box of shining white gems, ‘I thought I’d sew them onto the bodice.’

Edith was transfixed by the dress that had so little to do with her.

There was no mirror in which Edith could see herself, only the reflection in the window and the look in Flora’s eyes. Her body seemed different in the dress. It held her tighter, more upright, and she felt powerful. A dress like this was a suit of armour.

Flora had a mouth full of pins when they heard a loud knocking on the front door. Taking the pins from her mouth, she asked, ‘Shall I see who it is?’

Edith shook her head. She knew it was the butcher come to shout at her or worse for having broken the cuckoo clock.

‘Where’s Edith?’ He sounded angry.

They could hear the cabinet maker complaining, then what the men were saying was lost in a muffled conversation.

Edith braced herself. She stood tall as the bedroom door was thrown open.

‘Why did you do that to the present I gave you? Do you know how…’

He stopped, his rage instantly evaporating as he stared at the vision before him. Edith was almost unrecognisable and even more desirable than when he’d last seen her.

Flora said, ‘It’s unlucky for the groom to see the bride in her wedding gown before the ceremony.’