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where they put on shows with girls who dance and sing, and rich folks pay a fortune to see them.’
    I searched for the name in the advertisement pages of the London newspapers, which were cleared away from His Grace’s library each night, and true enough it was there. ‘The Gaiety, London,’I whispered to myself.
    And that was the day I started to dream of becoming a dancer.
    Sometimes when I was dusting the big mirrors in the drawing room I would study myself, and I saw that I had over-large green eyes while my face was small and pale. My hair, which was fair like my mother’s, was always pinned up out of sight beneath my big cap.
    We maids weren’t encouraged to show any vanity – far from it. We did have our own bathroom, down thecorridor from our dormitory, where we had a flushing toilet and even had piped hot water to fill our copper bath, though the water was more like a lukewarm trickle by the time it reached our attic.
    I would bathe myself carefully whenever it was my turn. I would also wash my hair and rinse it with a little vinegar I’d taken from the kitchen. There was no mirror, but sometimes as I stood and dried myself I would look down at my body. I was too thin, I knew, and my breasts were too small. And I wouldn’t be in there long before someone would bang on the door and shout, ‘Sophie! Are you going to be in that blessed bath all night?’
    I wrote to Mr Maldon about the crystal set.
Robert danced with Mrs Burdett to ‘Rockabye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody’. Do you know it? I imagine you hear all the latest music, wherever you are.
But I wanted to write,
I miss you. I think of you.
    Now that the war was over there were more parties at Belfield Hall than ever, even though the Duke was an invalid; and in the June of 1919 I remember there were forty guests staying for two weeks. It was a long, hot summer and, often, as the younger ones played tennis in the cool of the early evening, I would catch a glimpse of them through a window – we all did, as we scurried round the house like invisible creatures, rushing to complete our many lowly tasks and be out of sight before the guests came back in.
    The footmen, hot in their full livery, served iced lemonade and gin and tonic out on the lawns, with some savoury French delicacies that were called
canapés
,though Cook grimly pronounced them
canopies
. Lady Beatrice arrived one evening from London in her blue two-seater; a second motorcar followed behind containing her trunks full of clothes and a gramophone more modern than Mrs Burdett’s, which someone placed in a ground-floor room so that with the French windows open, the music could be heard out on the lawns.
    The younger guests got into the habit of dancing in the open air once they’d finished their tennis, and they played their favourite records again and again. During the warm nights, as the lamps inside the big house glowed, the music filled the gardens. I still remember those tunes note for note, especially ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’, ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’, and ‘All I Want Is You’.
    On the sixth night after Lady Beatrice arrived, something happened. Whether it was because the guests were still outside so most of us were free of our duties for a brief while, or whether it was the sight of all the young people in their beautiful clothes dancing out in the dusk, I don’t know. But for some reason quite a few of the servants – led by Robert, of course – began to dance too in the servants’ hall, where the music was loud and clear as anything.
    What had happened to the upper servants, who were usually so strict with us? The housekeeper Mrs Burdett had been taken poorly with the heat, that I knew, and was resting in her private room, which was some distance away. Where Mr Peters and Cook were, I can’t recall. All I remember is that a lot of servants werejigging around to the music, and though I’d stood aside, suddenly Robert was grabbing my hand.
    The tune was