The room was poised. Crillick had us in his power. There was a thin sheen of sweat on his face. I recognised the look in his eyes, the brightness that came when you had an audience hanging on your every word. He surveyed us all and his gaze lingered on me a little longer than the others, until I shrank still further back into the alcove. Was that a frown that crossed his face when he saw the woman sitting along from where I stood? I looked over at her but she sat perfectly still, watching intently. She held a tiny notebook in her hand, her face eager as all the others to take in everything that happened. Did I recognise her? I thought I might have seen her before, but couldn’t remember where.

Crillick placed his hand on top of the sheet that Grace and Alice held. This was it. My hands were knitted together at my chin, my body braced to see the animal I was sure Crillick had brought home.

‘I present to you the wonderous … Leopard Lady!’ Crillick cried.

He whipped the cloth from Grace and Alice’s hands with a flourish. The two girls immediately fled the stage.

And there she was, her eyes wide and staring in fear. The strangest woman I had ever seen.

She wore a close-fitting cream shift that was only just decent, the hem skimming her knees and leaving her arms bare. Her skin was dark, darker than mine, save for a great patch on the left of her face that was almost pure white. The patch circled her eye and stretched as far as her earlobe. I looked again and saw her arms bore the same markings. Did the strange pattern continue all the way up to her thighs and across her torso? It was as if someone had thrown paint at her. Her tightly curled hair was clipped short and was mostly black but there, too, I noticed a colourless streak. Not grey with age, but white as if all the pigment had been bleached out of it.

I’d underestimated Crillick as a showman. He let us look our fill – no patter, no pronouncements. I’d been on the receiving end of this gaze. In the moment when Amazonia threw off her cloak, I’d interpreted the wide-eyed stares as admiration, told myself that the audience’s attention conferred on me some sort of power, but from this vantage, I saw it for what it really was. The men and women who came to see Amazonia at Crillick’s were not marvelling at a wonder, they were gawping at a monster. Worse still, I could sense it in myself; this way of looking as I took in the woman before me, my eyes roving, questing, probing, greedy to consume her.

In the quiet Henrietta’s whispered question was loud as a shout. ‘What is it, Mother?’

Crillick stepped forward.