My mother knelt down and disentangled me from her skirts which I clutched like a limpet. We were on eye level now and she wrapped her arms around me and spoke low into my ear.

‘I wish I could stay with you, but if I leave, they will come for me. Hunt me down and find me. They’d put adverts in the papers to say I was a runaway, and every time I went abroad I’d fear that they were watching me. They own me, body and soul, but you were born free.’ She sat back on her heels and I could see her face was wet, but her voice was strong.

‘Say it after me, Zillah. Born free,’ she said.

‘I was born free,’ I hiccuped out through my tears, too young to grasp the full meaning of what it meant but understanding that it was something most important.

I felt someone behind me and turned to see Mrs Bradley. She placed her hand on my shoulder and gave a comforting squeeze.

‘You’re sure, Beulah?’ she said, and my mother nodded. ‘Best go now then, you’ll be in enough trouble as it is and there’s no need to make it worse.’ She gave my mother a fierce hug. ‘I’ll do my best by her, for your sake, but it’s not an easy life.’

‘I’m not naive,’ my mother said. ‘She may not be much safer here, but whatever chance I can give her I will. She was born free but in that house they will treat her as if the law has not changed. You will teach her to look after herself?’

‘As if she were my own daughter, don’t you worry about that.’

My mother bent down to me once more.

‘You will be a good girl for Mrs Bradley, won’t you, Zillah?’

I’d stopped crying, knowing somehow that my mother needed me to be brave. She untied her scarf and wound it round my neck. It smelt of her.

‘Take this to remember me by and, above all, promise me one thing. Never forget that you are free and that means you can go where you like and make your own choices. Do what you can to avoid serving others. Say it again for me.’

‘I am free. I was born free.’

It was my mother who made me feel that to be born free made me special. Which meant that slavery was a sin, a sign of shame, was it not? Lucien Winters had said different when I’d walked with him around St James’s Square. He’d given me a great deal to think about.