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ale, pitchers and clean chamberpots, linen and lights. Mrs Partridge had introduced her to us on our first evening as ‘Goose’, with no qualification or explanation nor any apology. Goose was bafflingly ungoosey: a vivacious, snub-nosed redhead, her hair so vivid as to be closer in colour, I felt, to purple. A gap between her front teeth made a smile within a smile, both of which came for me whenever I offered to help, along with a reassurance which sounded anything but: ‘You stay where you are.’ Or sometimes even a triumphant ‘Uh-uh-UH!’ as if my attempt to be less of a burden had somehow been underhand. Did she think – as my mother did – that I’d end up creating more work? All I was ever offering to do was lift my feet for her broom, or run a cloth over the panelling, or plump up the pillows – what scope was there in any of that for disaster? Perhaps she feared she’d get into trouble with the Partridges if she allowed it. Perhaps, though, she just liked to refuse me. She had an accent I couldn’t place – which, come to think of it, did have a rather honking quality – despite our having to hear a great deal of it. Amazingly, her ceaseless, wide-ranging commentary – food prices, weather conditions, bowel habits, gardening tips, corruption, witchcraft and deformities – never had Jane so much as look up from her books.
    It didn’t take long for me to get sick of flopping around; it was strangely exhausting to spend so much time in bed or at a window. Mrs Partridge came visiting several times each day – often a little too dusted with cat fur for my comfort – with solicitous enquiries as to our well-being, and on the fourth afternoon I cracked and begged her for something – anything – to do. Shelling peas, perhaps, I said, or tying lavender bunches. She looked doubtful – no peas that particular day, apparently, and already more lavender that summer than boxes and chests in which to make it useful. Polishing plate, then, I suggested, or folding linen; but by then she seemed almost scared.
    â€˜Goose—’ She didn’t have to finish. I understood. Repairs, then, I offered, in desperation; never in my life had I thought I’d hear myself actually offering to patch and darn, but any household, even one as small as the Partridges’, would have more patching and darning to be done than any single person could manage. All those sagging hems and missing hooks-and-eyes, the detached belt loops and ripped linings: Goose would be cutting off her beak to spite her face if she objected to some help with those. But if it did have to be repairs, I warned Mrs Partridge, they’d need to be hidden. Sweetly, she tried to laugh that off as false modesty on my part until I allowed her a glimpse of a seam on my sleeve, after which she was good at coming up with jobs on which it was safe to let me loose.
    So there I was, for hours on end, fidgeting a needle and thread around in floppy old linen against the backdrop ofSusanna, whose stitches were hidden in the clear light of day, packed so tightly as to forge a single, continuous surface.
    On my fifth afternoon, I found a means of regular, brief escape: I’d fetch our meals from the Partridges’ kitchen and return the tray when we’d finished. This too, though, was the job of no-nonsense Goose, and nonsense was exactly what she thought it was for me to be making what she called unnecessary trips up and down the stairs. I stood my ground until Mrs Partridge was called to adjudicate and pronounced it fine for me to do so if I wished.
    And I did wish, I definitely did. It wasn’t much of a freedom but it was something, and much more than just a break from Jane. I liked being elsewhere in the house, even if it was just on the stairs. Usually I’d come across someone – if on occasions only the Partridges’ cheerful hound, Twig – and we’d greet