She turned away and set down the tiny snowman she’d brought from the garden, placing it on her toy shelf beside the beribboned dolls and stuffed teddies. The snowman was small enough to have been built by goblins and wore a velvet top hat. Shining raisins formed his mischievous dark eyes. He had a miniature pipe in his mouth, which he continued to smoke even after Beatrice set him on the shelf, filling her room with a tobacco scent bursting with bonfires and toffee apples and cinnamon spice.

The garden had disappeared and the room seemed to be growing warmer, but her pillow still smelled faintly of frogs and frosted visions, and she fell asleep that night with a smile on her face.

By the time the maid came to wake her the next morning, the snow and ice roses were long gone, the bedroom was sticky and hot once again, and the only sign of the snowman was a damp pile of raisins, a tiny hat and a pipe that smelled faintly of toffee. But they were enough. They were a promise to Beatrice that the garden was real. She had not dreamed or imagined it; it had existed and she had been there, wrapped up in the swirling cape of its magic.

She longed to tell someone about what she had seen, but she still couldn’t speak and, besides, there was no one to tell. Her father kept to his rooms when he wasn’t watching over her mother’s body, and the servants were too busy with their household duties.

The day passed in a vacuum. Not only was there no sound inside the house, but there was no life in it, either. Beatrice couldn’t stand it and spent most of her day out in the grounds, searching for mushroom rings and trying not to think about her mama. There was no sign of James and she hoped he hadn’t got into trouble with his father for the time he’d spent with her the day before. She longed to confide in him, but his apprenticeship had started and she knew he was busy weeding, raking, scything, stoking the stovehouse boilers, hoeing borders and a myriad of other tasks that had to be recorded in the Garden Day Book each evening.

When night fell, she hardly dared hope she would see the garden again, but once more she woke to thirteen chimes. They’d barely stopped echoing before she ran outside into the lantern-lit garden.

When her nanny returned the next day, she scolded Beatrice for losing her mourning parasol. Beatrice tried to explain in writing that it had been eaten by a strange tree in a magic garden, but her nanny thought she was making up stories and boxed her ears to teach her a lesson.