‘Don’t you fret, my dear,’ I continued, ‘Tabby will be here presently. I’ll make sure she lights a nice fire for you, and then you can have some hot chocolate. We don’t want you to catch a chill now, do we?’

‘Don’t we?’ I fancied there was a faintly sardonic intonation in her voice.

‘Of course not, my dear,’ I replied briskly, fighting an urge to gabble. ‘Tabby! Drat the woman, she should be here by now. Tabby! Does she want you to freeze to death?’

‘Tabby’s gone out,’ said Effie softly. ‘I told her to go to the chemist’s for my drops.’

‘Oh.’

‘There’s nobody else. Em has the afternoon off. Edwin has gone home. We’re alone, Henry.’

The unreasoning terror swept over me again and I struggled to keep control. For some reason the thought of being alone with Effie, at the mercy of whatever strange thoughts were playing through her mind, appalled me. I fumbled in my pocket for my cigar-lighter, forced myself to turn my back to her as I struggled to light the lamp…I felt her eyes like nails in the back of my neck and my jaw cramped with hatred of her.

‘That’s better, isn’t it? Now we can see each other.’ That was right: brisk informality. No need to feel that she had somehow planned a confrontation; no reason to think that somehow she already knew…I turned to face her again, my jaw now aching with a smile I knew did not fool her for a minute.

‘I’ll close the window,’ I said.

I took as long as I dared over the latch, the curtain, the leaves on the floor. I threw the leaves into the grate. ‘I wonder if I could get the fire going.’

‘I’m not cold,’ said Effie.

‘But I am,’ I replied with false cheerfulness. ‘Let’s see…it can’t be difficult. Tabby does it every day.’ I knelt down in front of the grate and began to arrange the papers and dry sticks on the coals. There was a brief flare and crackle, then the chimney began to smoke.

‘Dear me,’ I laughed, ‘there must be more of a knack to this than I thought.’

Effie’s lips twisted in a knowing, hateful half-smile. ‘I’m not a child,’ she spat suddenly. ‘Nor am I a half-wit. You don’t have to talk to me as if I were.’

Her reaction was so abrupt that I was again taken aback. ‘Why, Effie,’ I began foolishly, ‘I…’ Collecting myself I made my voice crisply patient, like a doctor’s. ‘I can see you are ill,’ I said. ‘I can only say that I hope later you will realize quite how hurtful and ungrateful your words seem to me. However, I-’

‘Nor am I ill,’ interrupted Effie once more-and for that moment I believed it: her eyes were as sharp and bright as scalpels-‘In spite of everything you have said and done to prove me otherwise, I am not ill. Please, don’t bother to try to lie to me, Henry. We’re alone in the house; there is no-one for you to perform to but yourself. Try to be honest, for both our sakes.’ Her voice was dry and emotionless, like a governess’s, and for a moment I was twelve again, blustering falsely and naively to try and save myself from punishment, every word fixing my guilt deeper and deeper.

‘You have no right to talk to me like that!’ My voice sounded weak even to myself, and I strained to keep the authority in my tones. ‘There are limits to my patience, Effie, even though I make great allowances for your behaviour. You owe me respect as a wife, if nothing else, and-’

‘Wife?’ exclaimed Effie, and I was oddly reassured to hear a shrill note creep into her measured tones. ‘Since when did you ever want me to be a wife? If I were to tell what you…’

‘Tell what?’ My voice was too loud but it seemed the words were beyond my control. ‘That I’ve nursed you when you were sick, borne your tantrums, given you everything you have ever wanted? I-’

‘My Aunt May always said it wasn’t decent for you to marry a girl so much younger. If she knew…’

‘Knew what?’

Her voice was a whisper. ‘Knew how you treat me…and where you go in the middle of the night…’

‘You’re raving, girl. Go where, for Heaven’s sake?’

‘You know. Crook Street.’

I gasped. How could she have known? Could someone have recognized me? Could I have been followed? The implications of what she knew flooded over me. It couldn’t be. She was bluffing.

‘You’re mad!’

She shook her head silently.

‘You’re mad, and I can prove it!’ Feverishly I reached into my coat pocket, dragging out Russell’s paper. I read it aloud in breathy snatches, sick euphoria coursing through my veins: “‘…that the patient, Euphemia Madeleine Chester…evidence too great to be ignored…mania, hysteria and catalepsy…dangerous to self and to others…hitherto recommend indefinite treatment…hands of…equipped to…” You heard what he said: I can have you sent to an asylum, Effie, an asylum for the insane! No-one will believe an insane woman. No-one!’

There was no expression on her face, just a terrible blankness. For a moment I wondered whether she had heard me, or whether she had retired once more into her strange unguessed-at thoughts. But when she spoke her voice was very calm.

‘I always knew you’d betray me, Henry,’ she said.

I tried to speak; but after all, she was right: there was no-one to perform to but myself.

‘I knew you didn’t love me any more.’ She smiled and for a moment looked almost beautiful. ‘But that’s all right, because I haven’t loved you for a long time.’ She tilted her head as if remembering something. ‘But I won’t let you sacrifice me, Henry. I won’t let you lock me up. I’m not ill and soon enough someone will realize that. Then maybe people will begin to believe what I say.’ She flicked me a glance which seemed ridden with malice. ‘And I could tell them so much, Henry,’ she added levelly. ‘The house in Crook Street and what goes on there…Fanny Miller wouldn’t lie for you, would she?’

My breath was a mouthful of needles in my throat, my chest tightening unbearably. Suddenly, desperately, I needed my chloral. Heedless of Effie’s triumphant smile I grabbed the vial from around my neck and wrenched out the stopper. With shaking hands I poured ten drops into a glass and topped the glass with sherry. The glass was too full: some of the drink spilled, running down on to my cuff. A sudden, exquisite hatred welled up inside me.

‘No-one would believe such an outlandish tale.’ My voice was level again, and my relief was immense.

‘I think they might,’ she said. ‘Besides, think of the scandal just as your work is beginning to gain recognition. The very hint that you had tried to put your wife in an asylum to prevent her from exposing your secret vice…it would ruin you. Would you risk that?’

I thanked whatever dark gods there were for the chloral; already it seemed as if the lid of my head had been lifted and a draught of cold air blown in, reducing my thoughts to the size of motes in the wind. I heard my voice speaking from a great distance.

‘My dear Effie, you’re overwrought. I think you should lie down and wait for Tabby to bring your drops.’

‘I won’t lie down!’ Realizing her advantage was somehow gone Effie lost her eerie composure and her voice had a sharp edge of hysteria.

‘Well, don’t lie down then, dear,’ I replied. ‘Far be it from me to coerce you. I’ll go down and see if Tabby has come back yet.’

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

‘Of course I believe you, my dear. Of course I do.’

‘I can ruin you, Henry.’ (Her voice wavered even as she tried to control it: ‘ru-in you, H-henry.’) ‘I can and I will!’ But the ghostly figure with the soft, cold voice and the verdigris eyes had gone, and the threat was empty. Tears silvered her face and her hands were shaking. I brushed the paper in my breast pocket and allowed myself the luxury of a smile.

‘Sleep well, Effie.’

And, as I turned away into the gaslit passage, I felt a clenched fist tighten beneath my ribcage; tightening joyfully, cruelly. I’d never let her touch us, Marta and me. Never.