She knew this with a certainty that stilled the heart and made her wonder why she had not known it before and how she knew it now. But she did know it and she could not, now, unknow it.

She picked up the boots and stood up to return to the kitchen.

‘I know about Miss Trent.’

Alice froze midstride, and her heart, which had lurched and shook and caused her all manner of trouble all day, quivered at these words. It was no name she knew, but the voice—it was Mrs Dunlevy’s—cried it the way Milli had cried out the Lord’s name in the courthouse as the baby had ripped her open in its hurry to reach the world.

‘Hypocrite!’

This was him, Mr Dunlevy.

And then:

‘No! Do not speak another word. I will not hear it. Your behaviour is utterly, utterly beyond the pale. I forbid you to speak of this. I forbid you to leave this house or to speak of this to anyone!’

The door flew open and Alice flattened herself against the wall as Mr Dunlevy burst from the room. If he had paused to look around he must surely have seen her there, the muddied boots clutched to her breast, but he did not stop, he did not look around. He went straight up the stairs, his footsteps thudding with each step, and a door slammed. Its echoes filled the hallway, filled the house, long after he was gone.

The house now screamed out its silence, it reverberated off the walls, it shook the very foundations, it pinned Alice to the floor and for a time she forgot to breathe.

But was that the baby crying, two floors up, distantly? Oh, it could not be!

Alice cried out, a sob of dismay, and her hand flew to her mouth to stifle it. She dropped the boots and sprung from her hiding place at the exact moment Mrs Dunlevy came out of the drawing room and they all but collided. They came face to face, the mistress and the servant, and whose face it was that was the most ashen, whose eyes it was that showed the most dismay, was impossible to say. Alice saw Mrs Dunlevy’s face and she heard again the words her husband had spoken for she could not unhear those words and she could not pretend she had not heard them, and she saw that Mrs Dunlevy knew this too.

There was no place to hide. All was laid bare.

And what now? For no servant should see her mistress’s shame, should witness her mistress’s disgrace. No household can endure it.