Her thoughts returned to the dreadful morning of Esme’s funeral and the seed James had given her. She was wearing the same coat she had worn that day and she put her hand in the pocket. She had not thought of the seed since that moment and worried that it might have fallen out, but her fingers quickly found it. She’d assumed beforehand that it must have been warm from James’s touch, but she realised now that the seed was emitting a heat of its own.

‘What do you think?’ Rosa said quietly to Ada. ‘Shall we plant this together for your sister?’

They were alone in the hothouse and Rosa liked the idea of it being just them – the only two people in the world who had truly loved Esme. She found an empty plant pot, put in a handful of soil from a nearby bed and then pushed the seed beneath the surface. She was just looking for a watering can when, to her surprise, a green shoot suddenly poked up from the soil. The next second the shoot lengthened, turning gracefully into a long stem. A bud formed and ripened at the end, the leaves peeled back and petals fanned out from the stalk like a peacock spreading its tail. In less than a minute there was an entire orchid before them.

Rosa stared at it, spellbound. Her spare hand was still frozen in the act of reaching for a watering can. Her other arm burned with the effort of carrying Ada. The mourning orchid was, in some ways, one of the more modest in the hothouse. There were no vivid patterns, no particularly exotic perfume, and it did not sing or sparkle. It was, in most respects, rather plain and ordinary – except for the fact that its petals were an entirely new colour.

Rosa searched her mind for the right words to describe it, or other colours to compare it to, but it was hopeless. She had to accept that this was a colour she simply didn’t have a name for. All she could think was that it was darker than black and more beautiful than purple. The edges of the petals were laced in a creamy ivory shade. Somehow it seemed to gentle her soul in a way that nothing else had since Esme’s death – not the mourning clothes, or the ostrich plumes, or the hideous wax mourning doll that Eustace had ordered for the grave. All those things had made her feel worse, like a cloak that kept getting wetter and heavier about her shoulders. But this flower was perfect and beautiful. Rosa looked down at Ada to see what she made of it – only her daughter wasn’t looking at the flower. She was looking straight up at her. And she was smiling.