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venom of her hostile glares came out in her words.
    “Maybe you done us all a favour.”
    Suddenly, in the mirror, I saw that she was standing immediately behind me.
    “You’ve always thought me a fool, ’aven’t you, Miss? But it’s Fergus she put out on the street an’ me as stays ’ere in comfort.
    That’s ’cos I do as she says. So don’t worry: I won’t tell nobody about this.”
    I was still staring incredulously at the reflection in the mirror of her hard, pinched face when Olivia came back into the room.
     
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R O B E R T G O D D A R D
    “Leave us,” she said. Sally obeyed at once.
    I looked down to avoid her gaze. In the struggle, I’d laddered one of my stockings: I noticed a large hole on my right knee. I stared at it and steeled myself not to look up. Olivia must have picked up Payne’s belt, because I could hear the buckle clinking as she walked slowly round the room. Then it stopped, as she stopped, by the bed.
    “What’s this book doing here?”
    “I took it . . . from the library.”
    “There’s blood on the spine. Whose blood is it?” I said nothing.
    Suddenly, she was standing beside me. She pulled my chin up sharply, forcing me to look at her. “You hit him, didn’t you? This is his blood.”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you should know: he’s dead. Sidney Payne is dead.” She spoke of him impersonally, as if they’d never been married at all.
    “It wasn’t my fault.” I hoped she would see the pleading in my eyes, but, if she did, it was only as a sign of the weakness she would play on.
    “There’ll be lots of questions—an inquest, a coroner. But I’ll keep you out of it. We’ll say nothing about what happened here—on one condition. That, from now on, you do as I say. I’ll keep you here and I’ll keep your secret—on that condition. Do you understand?” “Yes.”
    “Otherwise, I’ll have to tell the truth about your mother. How she did the bidding of any man who wanted her. How I can’t even say which one of them fathered you. How you inherited her perversions and helped to kill my husband. Do you want all that to come out?” “No.”
    “So you do understand?”
    “Yes. I understand.”
    “Good.” She rose. “Don’t wash your face before the doctor comes. A few tears will impress him.” She went back to the bed and picked up the book. “I’ll keep this—in case it’s needed.” She moved to the door, paused and looked back at me. “By the way: happy birthday, Leonora.” I had all that night, alone in my room, to think of what had happened and what Olivia had said. Just a few minutes really—fifteen
     

I N P A L E B A T T A L I O N S
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    at the most. But they had been sufficient for Sidney Payne to die and my dreams with him, of the parents I had never known. Not my father’s daughter? It explained why my mother was never spoken of, why she died elsewhere and in disgrace, why my grandfather had disinherited me. It explained everything—and yet nothing.
    Even in the depth of my despair, even in the grip of my shocked reaction, I knew that Olivia must have made it sound worse than it was. And why? Because now she had a way of holding me at Meongate. I had done nothing wrong, but I did not doubt that she could make it seem that I had. What would they do if they thought me responsible for Payne’s death? A lunatic asylum—Olivia would make sure of it. Unless . . . I obeyed her in everything. We had played into her hands, Payne and I. There would be no scandalous court case now that he was dead. There would be nothing I could do to resist her now that she could threaten me with exposure as his murderer. A bloodstained book I had never read, a mother I could neither disown nor defend, a father I could no longer claim. Her victory was complete.
    The following morning, Sally told me that Olivia wanted to see me. She was in the study.
    “I think it best that we understand each other,” she said, pacing the carpet by the window whilst I sat glumly