Patiently, I held the glass as Effie drank, clinging to my arm and gulping tears and medicine in equal quantities. Little by little I felt her body relax against mine until she was quite subdued.

‘That’s my good girl. Isn’t that better?’

Effie nodded sleepily and turned her head towards the crook of my arm. As she drifted once more in my arms I was momentarily aware of a sudden scent of jasmine-real or imagined? The impression was too fleeting to tell.

I was ill for several weeks; the wintry weather hindered my convalescence, for I caught a chill which confined me to my bed for some time after the premature birth of my child. I remember faces coming and going over me, with fixed grimaces of sympathy, but my heart was frozen inside me and, although I wanted to thank them for their concern, I could find no meaning in words. Tabby, who had been with me in Cranbourn Alley since I was a little girl, nursed me and shook her head over me and fed me thin broth as I lay in bed; my little maid, Em, brushed my hair and dressed me in pretty lace nightdresses and gossiped about her family and sisters in distant Yorkshire; Edwin the gardener sometimes sent a handful of early crocuses or daffodils from his precious beds with a gruff assurance that ‘they’d bring a bit of colour to the young lady’s cheeks’. But, in spite of their kindness, I could not bring myself to stir from my lethargy. I would sit by the fire with a thick shawl around my shoulders, sometimes working at my needlepoint, but more often simply staring into the fire.

William, who might have roused me, had returned to Oxford where a junior fellowship awaited him, torn between pleasure at this acknowledgement of his years of study, and unease at leaving me in so low a state.

Henry was all solicitude: for nearly a month I was permitted no visitors-no-one was to be allowed to distress me, he said-and he did not go to his studio once. Instead, he worked at home, making dozens of sketches of me, but I, who had once been enchanted by his work, cared nothing for it now. Once, I had loved the way he drew me, always emphasizing my eyes and the purity of my features, but now his art left me indifferent and I wondered that I had ever thought him talented.

The pictures sickened me, spread out like trophies over every available surface of wall in every room; and worst of all, in the bedroom, The Little Beggar Girl, painted when I was only thirteen, haunted me like the ghost of myself. A London slum, reproduced in minutest detail, from the sweat on the pavements to the ‘blacks’ drifting down from the muddy sky. A scrawny cat sits sniffing a dead bird in a gutter. Next to it sits a dying child, barefoot and clad only in a shift, her long hair touching the stones around her. Her broken begging-bowl lies on the street, and a stray shaft of light plays on her uplifted face. The frame, designed by the artist, bears a stanza from his poem of the same title:

Thou Innocent, untouch’d by worldly care,

Defil’d not by the fleshly taint of Love,

Surrender now these mortal limbs so fair

Yet feeble; clad in radiance soar above.

Among the lowliest of all wert thou

And yet, to thee the hosts of Heaven bow

Their humble heads; as by th’ Almighty’s side,

Enthron’d in ecstasy, thou art His bride.

Once I had been filled with admiration for the Mr Chester who could write real verses with so little effort. I had borne no criticism of him, had wept with frustration at the unkind words of Mr Ruskin on the occasion of his first exhibition. I could still vaguely remember the time when I had worshipped him, treasured every word he wrote to me, every sketch he discarded. I remembered my awed gratitude when he had offered to pay for my tutors, the leap of joy in my heart as I overheard my mother and Henry as they spoke together in the library. Aunt May had mistrusted the idea of my marriage to a man so much older than I. But my mother had been blinded by the thought of all the opportunities Mr Chester could give her daughter-and I, I was blinded by Mr Chester himself. At seventeen I had married him.

Married him!

I dug furiously at my needlepoint, tent-stitch one, cross-stitch two, suddenly bloated with hate and fury. The embroidery was half finished, the design an invention of Henry’s in rich, glowing colours: the Sleeping Beauty on her couch, all twined round with climbing roses. Even in its unfinished state, the face of the sleeping girl looked like mine.

Cross-stitch one, tent-stitch two…I stabbed at the needlework, making no effort to stitch now, simply digging at the fabric in mounting rage, tearing at the delicate stitchery, the gold thread. All unaware, I was crying aloud, without tears, a hoarse, primitive sound which, at any other time, would have terrified me.

‘Why, Miss Effie!’ It was Tabby’s voice, shocked into improper address.

Jolted out of my furious trance, I started and looked up. Tabby’s plump, good-natured face was twisted with distress.

‘Oh, what have you done? Your poor hands…and all your pretty ’broidery, too. Oh, ma’am!’

I looked down in surprise and saw my hands bleeding from a dozen stab wounds. A bloody handprint branded the needlework, obliterating half of the sleeping girl’s face. I surrendered the spoiled tapestry and tried to smile.

‘Oh dear,’ I said mildly, ‘how clumsy of me.’ Then, as Tabby began to say something, tears springing to her eyes, ‘No, Tabby, I am quite well, thank you. I will go to wash my hands.’

‘But ma’am, you’ll take a drop of laudanum, surely! The doctor-’

‘Tabby, if you would be so kind as to put away my sewing-things? I will not be needing them again today.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ said Tabby woodenly, but she did not move to obey the order until she had watched me stumble vaguely out of the room, fumbling at the doorknob with my bloody hands like a murdering sleepwalker.

I was poorly for almost two months before the doctor at last pronounced me fit enough to receive visitors. Not that I saw many people; Mother came once to talk about her toilettes and to reassure me that I still had plenty of time to start a family, and Aunt May came twice to sit quietly with me, discussing commonplaces with a gentleness very far from her usual style. Dear Aunt May! If only she had known how much I longed to talk to her, but I knew that once I opened the floodgates I would have to tell her everything-things I was not even prepared to admit to myself-so I remained silent, pretending that I was happy and that this cold, meticulous house was home. Not that Aunt May was deceived for a moment, but for my sake she tried to hide her dislike for Henry, conversing in stiff, brittle phrases, her back very straight against the chair.

Henry liked her as little as she did him, sourly commenting that her visits always seemed to leave me looking exhausted. She made a tart rejoinder to that comment. Triumphantly, Henry suggested that she should perhaps refrain from frequenting the house until she learned a more genteel conversational style; he would not have his wife subjected to this kind of talk. Aunt May was drawn into unguarded utterances and left beneath a cloud of recriminations. From my window I watched her leave, very small and grey beneath the cold sky, and I knew that Henry had his wish. I was his alone, for ever.

It was March, and, although the weather was still very chill, the sun was shining and there was a hint of approaching spring in the air. The parlour enjoys a fine view of the garden with its pond and meticulous flowerbeds, and that morning I was sitting for Henry in front of the wide bay window. I was still very wan, but with the bright sunlight warming my cheeks and my loose hair, I was conscious of a feeling of satisfaction and well-being.