I had not known that tears had been so close, but once alone, I wept until my body was shaken empty. I cried for Clara. I cried for Mary, and finally, I cried for myself, for my lost home and my lost loved ones and last of all for my helpless, crippling unhappiness.

The funeral left a stamp of desolation on all the inhabitants of Iskar and a colder tone breathed its dampness into corridors and corners: in rooms with heat, the walls sweated condensation. The air became sour and even when the rain ceased, the creaks and groans of the house were punctuated by a constant drip of water from broken gutters.

Mrs Lenister twice dropped a piece of cutlery and once knocked a milk jug across the tablecloth. Her dark eyes were brighter and her cheeks sunk beneath shadow. Greer continued unaffected and I sensed a superiority, a knowingness about her that drew my suspicions. I saw no grief, no sense of loss. Had she shown Hettie her hostility – the same hostility she gave me? I took to watching her more closely and examining the antipathy between us. At times she would stop in her work and challenge me with a stare. I had ceased trying to placate her and met her dislike with an open show of my own. But the person most affected was Mary. For someone who took up so little emotional and physical space, who made so few demands, she diminished further and as hard as I tried to cheer her, I watched her shrink.

My promise to stay was the candle I held to the darkness. I walked less and often spent my free hours waiting for lessons to finish. I spent hours cajoling Mary to speak. The doctor would already be in possession of Miss Gillies’ letter, be planning his return trip, might have informed the asylum of the patient they might soon have. If I had been afraid and unhappy before, it was worse now.

It had been a long day and I had found it hard to fill the hours usefully. Even though I dreaded Greer’s lullaby, I was grateful for bed. I lay between the sheets and waited for her to come as I did now each night. The pale flame that burned on my candle did not touch the depth of fear. Opening the drawer, I took more, placing them on every surface, and then I waited and eventually it came. I did not move but listened, and as she neared I resisted the tug of her voice, although the vibration of it wove into the air like the pluck of a cello string. I put my hands to my ears to block out the sound but still it continued on my brain. When I took my hands away, she had gone.

In spite of barbed thoughts, sleep dragged me down.