Jill did as she had promised and, from there, things started to get a little easier, bit by bit. It was still difficult, and exhausting, and frustrating at times, but Jill told her that was just as it should be, and it didn’t mean she was doing anything wrong. She showed Rosa how to breastfeed so that it wasn’t agony and explained that the babies were too young to smile yet, let alone laugh. She simply had to persevere. And so Rosa did. And there were moments when it became less difficult. And there were moments of peace when they could simply enjoy being together. And, eventually, there were even moments of happiness.

‘I can never thank you enough,’ Rosa said later to Jill. ‘Whatever your salary is, I will see that it is increased.’

The maid blushed and fidgeted uncertainly with her hands.

‘You don’t have to do that, your grace. But thank you.’

Rosa duly consulted the housekeeper and had Jill’s salary doubled, but even that hardly seemed adequate. Perhaps nothing ever would. After questioning Jill about her favourite animal, Rosa made her a clockwork hedgehog. No upper-class lady had ever seemed as delighted with their jewelled songbird as Jill seemed with her little hog.

Rosa’s health continued to improve as she recovered from the birth. Even when the twins grizzled, it seemed to her that they were worth every wretched moment with Eustace. They were what her whole life had been building up to. And if her happiness was marred every now and again by thoughts of the cryptic words whispered by those wretched sisters in the smoky darkness of that hermitage, well, she did not let it bother her for long. All of that sorrow was in the past and Rosa had drawn a line under it. Life would be better, now that she had the twins. There was love in the house for the first time. Certainly there would be no small gravestone. Rosa would not allow it.

Every evening, when they retreated to the night-nursery, Rosa closed the door and wound the carousel music box. The ponies spun round and round, shedding sparkling diamonds of light around the room. And then, one day, the Winter Garden pop-up book turned up in the nursery too. Rosa later learned that Jill had taken it from her dressing table and put it there, thinking it might be easier for Rosa to read to the babies, since she had confessed that she never knew what to say to their serious little faces.

When Rosa first saw the book, she wasn’t sure she wanted it in the nursery. After all, it reminded her of the Carousel of Icicles, and her own guilty ambition that would have erased the twins entirely if she had succeeded. But Jill had explained it was good for the babies to hear her voice, so she opened up the book and started to read.