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however, and suddenly her Ws were all Vs and her As were all Es and the definite article – often elusive – disappeared entirely. Norah, reading the signs, flushed a little, though her smile barely faded.
    ‘Well sure, missus, now you’re here I’ll be clearing that table and putting some fresh toast out, so I will. Will you be wanting tea? Or should I put a pot of coffee out, it being nearly half past nine?’
    This sounded like a reproach, even to Norah. ‘Either way, it’s no trouble missus,’ she added judiciously.
    ‘I’ll have tea, thank you Norah. I’m going to leave room now and come back in ten minutes, and I expect to see everything as it should be. Do you understand?’
    Norah flashed her a baffled, injured look.
    ‘Sure, what do you take me for? An eejit?’
    This was something else that Norah’s interview hadn’t revealed: a tendency towards lippyness when a simple ‘yes’ would serve. Her manner was altogether too casual and familiar, and in many other households she would have been dismissed within a week of starting. But she was young and Irish and – Amos had said – vulnerable. They had hired her and now they had a moral responsibility to keep her, flaws and all. She was good with Maya, minding her when the two of them were working and Miss Cargill’s lessons had finished for the day, and in any case Amos couldn’t spend his working day trying to protect the poor and oppressed, then come home in the evening and sack the maid, could he? Anna supposed not, though there had been many a time in the past two years when she would have liked to do exactly that.
    ‘Norah,’ she said now, ‘please, just do as I asked.’
    ‘I shall, missus.’
    Anna made to leave, but before she was out of the door Norah said, ‘Ah bejesus, I’ll be forgetting my head one day,’ and produced a folded piece of paper from the pocket of her pinafore. ‘The master asked me to give this to you, missus. It’s a few lines to say sorry he missed you and would you like to take a stroll by the river at dinner time?’
    ‘You mean you’ve read it?’ Anna’s voice was cold.
    ‘Well of course I have. Sure, what’s the point of being able to read if you don’t from time to time exercise the talent? He didn’t say I wasn’t to.’
    Anna held out her hand for the note. ‘In future, please leave any messages from Mr Sykes on the hall table. Unread, preferably.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Norah, diverted from the possibility of contrition by a sudden new thought. ‘There’s a letter for you, missus, on the hall table, since you mention it. A big fat one. Probably from Mrs MacLeod because it looks to be from Barnsley, although the postmark’s a bit blurred and it could be Burnley, so it could, although I thought to myself, But who does the missus know in Burnley?’
    As she prattled she handed over Amos’s note to Anna and smiled, quite oblivious to the irony of her situation. Anna considered pointing it out – postmarks should not be scrutinised, just as private notes should not be read – then thought again. There was a letter from Yorkshire, and it might be from Eve. Norah’s incorrigible nosiness was, by comparison, of no account at all. She left the room and Norah burst immediately into song. She couldn’t work if she wasn’t allowed to sing; another idiosyncrasy that had revealed itself after her appointment, naturally.

Chapter 4
    T he docks in Port Antonio were seething with ships, fruit and people, and at the eye of the storm was the stately bulk of the Whittam liner, the
Cassiopeia
. She was a fine vessel, one of three luxury passenger ships owned by the company, and noticeably more spruce than any of the other vessels moored in the greasy blue-green waters of the harbour. The gangplank was down and the first passengers, hesitant and unsteady after three weeks at sea, were beginning to pick their way towards terra firma.
    Scotty, watching them, drew on what was left of his cigarette, pinching the inch of