‘Here? This is your home?’ she asked, and Miss Trent nodded, her eyes closed, leaning on the angel of mercy who had appeared from nowhere. They negotiated the steps and the front door, they chose the lift over the stairs and stood in silent and grim communion as the hydraulic lift rattled and wheezed its way up to the first floor.

But she has recognised me! thought Eleanor with a horror that turned her flesh clammy. She knows who I am and that is the cause of her collapse! And now they were trapped together, she and Miss Trent, in this cage.

But it could not be, she reasoned. The girl was unwell before they had met, the girl’s collapse had come when her eyes were fixed solely on the ground at her feet. There was no danger, then—though what she had thought that danger might be, Eleanor could no longer think. Exposure, perhaps. Her unveiling.

‘This one—this is my door,’ Miss Trent gasped. ‘The key—it is in the pot.’

And her angel of mercy scrabbled around in the pot of the giant fern and soon located the key, and she opened the door and helped the young lady inside. She took her to the little chintz settee and lowered her gently down.

And now what?

Eleanor did not move. She felt the absurdity of her situation. She observed in a bewildering rush the host of mismatching tables and chairs, the crimson wallpaper, the Landseers and the pre-Raphaelite women on the walls, the French doors and the little balcony beyond, the mantel and the clock and the door to the bedroom. She had left the bedroom door slightly ajar, she saw now. And the clock, was it exactly in the centre of the mantel or had she replaced it a little too far to the left?

‘Thank you. I am a little better now, I believe,’ said Miss Trent in a low voice, not lifting her gaze from her hands in her lap.

She did not look a little better. Her face was a ghastly grey and her hands showed a tremor. Perspiration stood out on her face as though a fever had overcome her. And there were spots of blood on the fingers of her gloves. And on the hem of her skirt. More than spots, a fresh splash of blood, though its origin was unclear.

‘Is there someone I might fetch for you?’ Eleanor suggested. ‘A neighbour, or a friend? Your … husband, perhaps?’

‘No. No one, thank you.’

‘Then may I get you something? A glass of water? Or brandy, perhaps, if you have such a thing?’

‘Perhaps a glass of water …’

She sat rigidly upright, her hands one on either side of her, pressing down on the upholstery. Her eyes were closed.

‘Of course,’ murmured Eleanor.