Mrs Dunlevy turned back to the window. She did so with a single smooth movement that involved head, neck, shoulders, her expression not changing, the eyebrow returned to its normal position. She does not move like we do, thought Alice, like most people; she moves like a swan. Alice had not seen a swan, but she had the sense that this was how one would move: slowly, gracefully, without the ugly, jerking, hurried movements that other people made, that she herself made, could not help making. It was the difference between them. One of the differences.

Alice’s hands shook. She clenched them tightly into fists behind her back.

‘This is just the latest, then, in a series of errors you have made recently, Alice,’ said Mrs Dunlevy, turning once more and studying her steadily, gravely.

Alice waited. Her gaze, no match for her mistress’s, sunk to the floor.

‘Things have been left undone, or they have been done late—the laundry, the dusting, the beds, the silver. The list goes on. Do not think I have not observed it. Your work has become sloppy.’

It seemed extraordinary to Alice that the thing she had feared—this very meeting with her employee, these exact words spoken—had come to pass. And because she had imagined it, had feared it and now it was happening, she felt very far away, watching herself from elsewhere, another Alice Nimrod, not herself.

‘It is true I did get behind, madam,’ said the other Alice, ‘but I have worked double hard today to catch up. And I have caught up now, madam.’

‘I am glad to hear it, for I will not put up with laziness. You have a good position here and mark my words, Alice, I will not be made a fool of, do you understand?’

Mrs Dunlevy’s expression did not change, nor did her gaze fix directly on Alice but at some distant place that only she could see. A cold place, it seemed to Alice.

‘Yes, madam. Of course, madam.’

‘Then you may go. We shall say no more about it. For now.’

Alice left, both the Alice in the room with Mrs Dunlevy and the Alice observing from a great distance and now, all in a rush, the two Alices collided once more into a single Alice who found herself filled with such a jumble of different emotions she could not think. She stumbled once as she walked across the landing.