Despite Eustace’s concerns about them being last year’s spectacle, it was immediately clear that the peacocks were still the highlight of the event. Guests crowded around the clockwork birds, exclaiming in delight every time one of them fanned out their tail, showering the onlookers with sparks of sapphire and lighting up the surrounding sky with a pale blue haze. People congratulated Eustace on the clockwork peacocks again and again, exclaiming at their colours, their beauty, the intricacy of their clockwork mechanics.

The remaining guests buzzed like bees around the pagodas and follies where the new entertainment was to be found. Eustace had employed an ever-popular freak show, composed of people who were too tall or too short, too thin or too fat, too hairy or completely bald. This seemed to go down extremely well with their guests, but Rosa didn’t care for it. The eyes of the Giraffe Girl were sad behind her smile, and it seemed cruel the way the guests tugged and tore at the hair of the dark-skinned Woolly Woman, although the sign invited them to do just that: She is genuine; you are at liberty to take hold of this lock of hair and pull it …

Rosa felt herself growing tenser with each performer they viewed, until she was as brittle as a twist of ice. The laughter from the guests seemed too shrill, the smell of perfume and Macassar oil was overpowering, the red lips of all those smiling mouths were sickening. Beneath her corset, her skin was slick with sweat and her stomach felt tangled up in knots.

‘Please,’ Rosa said, digging her fingers into Eustace’s arm. ‘Might we take a stroll through the dark walk? The noise and the lights … they’re making my head ache.’

She looked longingly at the other end of the garden where an unlit path wound through an arboretum of Scots pines, with only the moonlight filtering through the branches to show the way. How blissful it would be to lose herself in the canopy of that cool, quiet foliage, just for a few moments. But Eustace turned her away, saying, ‘We haven’t seen all the entertainment yet. I’ve saved the best until last.’

He steered her through the trees to a hermitage. This building had the largest crowd of all, but it parted to let the duke and duchess through. The small stone building was lit with a single oil lamp, and Rosa saw it was occupied. At first she thought two elderly women sat side by side at a table, but then she gasped at the realisation that the women were joined at the shoulder.

‘Conjoined twins,’ Eustace said, delighted. ‘Are they not grotesque?’

The twins had a beaded shawl wrapped around their bony shoulders, carefully arranged to show off the part where they joined. Their dark eyes seemed to glitter out of the shadows at them.