‘Do you think they would have gone through with it if it wasn’t for Miss Masterson?’

Vincent’s silence told me what he thought. He turned me round to face him and wiped away the tears on my cheeks with the pads of his thumbs.

‘Don’t cry, now.’

‘Will you help her?’

‘I don’t know what you want me to do about it, Zillah. You should put it from your mind.’

That’s what he was doing. Acting like it hadn’t happened. Maybe once I could have done that too. Didn’t I put Amazonia from my mind when I came offstage and removed the leopard-skin costume? This felt different, though. The woman tonight – this ‘Leopard Lady’ – had appealed to me as one woman to another. The remembrance of the catch in her voice made me cry all the harder.

‘Please, Vincent, you must help her,’ I said again.

‘I would do anything not to see you sad.’

‘Speak to Crillick, then. Tell him he can’t treat her like that, like an animal. Tell him she’s not to be experimented on.’

‘I will, but only if you promise to get into bed now.’

He shuffled back to make room for me and raised the covers so I could crawl under them. His body was warm and I felt comforted wrapped in his arms.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and turned my head to plant a kiss on his shoulder. He’d closed his eyes and his breaths had evened out but I knew he wasn’t sleeping.

‘You’ll talk to Crillick tomorrow?’

‘Yes, Zillah, I said I would. I didn’t like it any more than you did.’

There! I knew he had been as disturbed as I had. How could he not have been? I waited for him to say more, to condemn his friend, to help me make sense of what we had seen. But no.

‘Sleep now, will you?’ was all he said.

I closed my eyes obediently, still troubled but calmer than I had been. Vincent would speak to Crillick in the morning and the Leopard Lady would be safe. It would not change what she had been through tonight, but it would mean she would not have to face a crowd like that again.