Effie was sitting on a gravestone, curled up like a child and shivering; putting my hand on her forehead I realized that she was feverish, and I tried to persuade her to dress quickly, so that she should not catch cold. She hardly responded, looking at me with blank, tragic eyes, and I felt my earlier irritation returning.

‘Can’t you help me, for God’s sake?’ I snapped as I struggled with the fastenings on her dress.

Effie continued to stare at me through the blackness like a drowned girl under a lake.

‘Come on, Effie, you can’t stay here all night,’ I said in a gentler tone. ‘You’ll have to get back home before Henry finds out you’ve been gone.’

But Effie just sat. She looked ill, her skin white and burning as sulphur. I could not send her back to Cromwell Square in such a state unless I wanted the whole scandalous affair made public; equally, I could not let her stay in the churchyard; it was cold-even I had begun to shiver-and she was already feverish. On top of that she needed a change of clothes; her own were muddy, the hem of her dress torn. There remained only one option and, as I examined it, I felt a hot grin forming around the region of my stomach; there was a certain poetry in the idea…

‘Come on, my dear,’ I said briskly, hoisting Effie to her feet. ‘I’m taking you to see Fanny. I’ll see that she lets you wash and gives you some clean clothes, then you’ll be able to get home before the servants are up.’

Impossible to tell whether she had heard me; but she allowed herself to be manoeuvred along the path towards the street. Once she started at a sound from behind us, her pointed fingernails scoring the flesh of my wrists, but for the most part she was passive. I left her standing by the gate as I found a hackney and I saw the coachman’s brows twitch as I lifted her in-a guinea in the hot palm of his hand soon put stop to his curiosity-but otherwise the few passers-by did not spare us a glance. All the better.

The house in Crook Street was lit up, of course, and the door was answered by a remarkably pretty red-haired girl who beckoned me in. Effie followed me without protest, and I left her with the pretty girl as I went in search of Fanny.

I have to say that Fanny always kept a genteel house: a card-room, a smoking-room, a parlour in which gentlemen relaxed in the opulent surroundings and talked to the ladies. She never allowed lewd behaviour in these rooms-for that there were private rooms on the first floor-and anyone failing to meet her standards was politely barred from the establishment thereafter. I have known gentry who were not so discriminating as Fanny Miller.

I found her in the smoking-room-she had always had a taste for those thin black cigars-fetchingly if eccentrically clad in a tasselled purple hat and matching smoking-jacket. Her tawny curls, barely restrained by a couple of amethyst clasps, glinted against the dull velvet. One of her cats stared coldly at me from her knee.

‘Why, Mose,’ she said with sweet composure, ‘what brings you here?’

‘A trifling problem,’ I replied lightly, ‘and a mutual friend. Could I impose for a moment?’ This last remark addressed Fanny’s smoking companion, an elderly gentleman with a wavering hand and a roguish expression.

Fanny’s agate eyes travelled from my muddy shoes to my face and back. ‘Do excuse me,’ she said to her elderly friend and, leaving her cigar in a china ashtray and removing her cap and jacket, followed me into the passageway. ‘Well, what is it?’ she demanded, rather less sweetly.

‘Effie’s here.’

‘What?’ Suddenly the eyes were hard pinpoints of fire. ‘Where is she?’

I did not understand her sudden fury, and I began to explain briefly what had happened. She cut me off with an angry gesture. ‘For God’s sake, be quiet!’ she hissed. ‘Where is she?’ I mentioned the girl with whom I had left Effie, and without another glance at me Fanny was off up the stairs, her beautiful mouth set in a furious line.

‘What’s the problem?’ I called after her, grabbing the sleeve of her velvet gown. She spun round, her hand raised to strike mine away; it was with a great effort of will that she did not. When she spoke it was with a venomous calm.

‘Henry’s here too,’ she said.

Somehow I seemed to recognize the room. As I drifted, my spirit coiling half in and half out of my body like a genie from a bottle, I seemed to see the little bed with its patchwork quilt, the table, the stool, the pictures on the wall, with the eyes of memory. Mose, Henry, the strange insanity which had overpowered me in the graveyard were reduced to the level of dreams, myself a dream’s dream in the floating dark. I vaguely remembered arriving at the house in Crook Street, being led upstairs…friendly hands in mine; faces; names. A girl about my own age with bright copper hair and emeralds in her ears: Izzy. A plump, good-natured lady, bodice cut very low over opulent white breasts: Violet. A tiny Chinese girl with hair like jet and a jade ring on every finger: Gabriel Chau.

I remembered their names, their voices, the soft mingling of scents on their powdered skin as they undressed me and washed my face in warm scented water…then all was blank for a time, and now I was clean and comfortable in the narrow white bed, wearing a child’s ruffled linen nightdress, my hair combed and braided for sleep. I dozed for a while and awoke calling for my mother, aged ten again and afraid of the dark. Then Fanny came to bring me a drink of something warm and sweet; but in my mind Fanny became confused with my mother, and I began to cry weakly.

‘Don’t let him come back…’ I begged. ‘Don’t let him in, don’t let the Bad Man in!’ For some reason I was afraid Henry would come in and hurt me, though Henry was in bed miles away, and in my feverish confusion I clung to Fanny and called her ‘Mother’ and cried. There must have been laudanum in the drink, because I slept again for a while, and when I awoke, my head ringing and my mouth dry and slack, I was afraid. I sat up abruptly in bed, thinking I heard someone standing outside the door. A floorboard creaked and, looking at the thin seam of light under the door, I saw the shadow of somebody standing there, heard his low, harsh breathing against the panels. A huge, delirious panic seized me then, and I tried to flatten myself against the foot of the bed, the quilt around my face, but even in the sounds of the bedclothes the breathing continued in my head, and I thought I could hear a creak of metal against wood as the predator began to turn the door-handle. In spite of myself I had to look as the seam of light became a broader and broader ribbon, revealing a man’s square outline in the doorway.

Henry!

For a moment, I was not sure whether the drug I had taken was giving me delusions; all rational thought was suspended by stark terror, and again I began to lose my knowledge of my own identity. I was no longer Effie, but someone younger, a child, a wraith…

‘Who’s there?’ His voice was sharp, but not with anger; I could almost fancy he sounded uneasy. When I did not answer I heard his voice rise, almost shrilly. ‘I said, who’s there? I can hear you. Who is it?’

I shifted helplessly and Henry took a step forwards.

‘I can hear you, you little witch. I can hear you in the dark. Who are you?’

In a voice which was not my own I uttered the first name which came into my head.

‘Marta…Marta Miller. Please-leave me alone, go away.’ But Henry had taken a step forwards when he heard the name. He was three feet away from me and, although he could not see me, I could see his face in the landing-light, staring and distorted with something like fear.

‘Let me see you.’ There was more than urgency in his voice. ‘Come into the light so that I can see you!’ He grabbed at me, and I pulled away, sliding over the bedpost so that I was hidden in its deeper shadow. I hit my foot against the bed as I fell, and I cried out sharply. ‘Please! Leave me alone! Go away!’