‘I could do that,’ said The Flea, quickly. ‘I’ll be working in Somers Town tomorrow, right beside the station.’

‘I don’t mind going.’

‘And neither do I.’ The Flea’s tone was bright but firm. Mattie looked at her companion over the top of her spectacles. ‘You fear I may mishandle the situation.’

‘It’s more that you’re very memorable, Mattie. After all, what we are talking about is …’

‘Bribery.’

‘Yes. Any visitor would need to be unobtrusive. And don’t forget I often have to raise quite delicate matters with my mothers, topics of discussion that I need to’ – she picked her words – ‘sidle around.’

‘I lack tact.’

‘Yes.’

‘Hmm.’ Mattie gave her eyes a rub. ‘You may be right. In which case, thank you. In the meantime, I urgently need to replace my diary, all my lecture dates were in there – do you have a record of them?’

‘They’re on the new kitchen calendar.’

‘Ah. I wasn’t sure, so directly after the incident I went across the road to the Drill Hall to look at the poster outside and …’

‘A week on Wednesday,’ said The Flea. ‘Seven o’clock.’

‘… and whoever pinned it on to the noticeboard has done so rather carelessly. There is a pleat right down the centre of the paper, eliminating an entire syllable of every line. My lecture is apparently entitled “Some Experiences of a Mint Suffragette”, though I fared rather better than Mrs Gretel Neumann and her daughters, who this week will be giving a demonstration of Traditional Germ Folk Dancing. One for you, I thought, Florrie: you could bring your flit-gun and douse the front rows of the audience with prophylactic Jeyes Fluid.’

There was a moment of silence and then The Flea flushed pink and, almost against her will, began to laugh.

‘Thought that might tickle you,’ said Mattie with satisfaction. She drained her tea and then stood and stretched. ‘A thoroughly irritating day,’ she said. ‘What I need is some violent exercise. I shall walk down to the bookmaker in Camden and see if he’ll honour my mark.’

‘Across the Heath again?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then please be careful. I still don’t understand what happened – was there a struggle, were you injured in any way?’

‘No. I was distracted by something and made myself an easy target.’ Humiliating to think of how she’d been standing, daydreaming like some silly flapper.

‘But distracted by what?’

Mattie shook her head. ‘It really doesn’t matter; it won’t happen again.’ She went to the hall to fetch her cape; it was crisping up for a frost outside.

Twenty minutes later, breasting Parliament Hill in the twilight, she saw a fox trot into the bushes, its mouth crammed with something that struggled. London lay sprawled below, yellow streetlights like a cheap glass necklace, the diamond pin of Venus hanging above. She could hear the jangle of the fair in the distance; the music was still playing, dangerously sentimental, and she took a deep breath and began to sing ‘The Marseillaise’, matching her footsteps to the rhythm of the lines. A spooning couple turned to stare; she nodded at them, pleasantly. People always stared. If one didn’t creep around, if one said what one thought, if one shouted for joy or roared with anger, if one tried to get things done, then seemingly there was no choice but to be noticeable. She couldn’t remember a time when her path hadn’t been lined with startled faces; they were her reassurance that progress was being made. What tremendous luck, she’d often thought, that she’d been born into an era of change. She could not have stood to havebeen like Dorothea Brooke, deprived of grand gestures, incrementally adding to the growing good of the world.