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she straightens herself. Slowly, she lets down the sash. She is merely a woman who needed a breath of fresh air. She makes sure to close the curtains, too, then sits back on the bed. It is hard, and too small for two people, for this is the room Robert had growing up. She lifts her fingers to her mouth and catches the edge of a ragged nail in her teeth.
       When she and Robert arrived here the house felt hollow—his mother keeping to her bed, the rooms ghostly in their dust sheets. Mrs. Bentley used to be a formidable woman, by all accounts. Maybe that's why the servants have taken liberties. It's their revenge. She imagines them like mice that creep out at night, or when doors are closed. Nosing around in places they should not be; looking for crumbs, for secrets to feed their curiosity with, or their greed. She has tried her best to scare them back into their place, but they hold her eye a little too long when she talks to them, as though they have uncovered a truth: that they are every bit as good as her.
       The house doesn't feel hollow anymore. Instead it has pulled in so uncomfortably tight around her that she finds it hard to breathe.

             N ight has fallen, the lamps have been lit, and the rooms look more splendid. Gone are the faded patches of wallpaper, the grime in the corners of the ceilings, the paleness of the carpets where threads have started to show through. As Jane opens each room she sees the gleam of polished furniture, the dance of light on the glass domes covering clocks and stuffed birds, the rich reds and oranges of paintings that had looked lifeless in daylight. But she does not have the time to be admiring anything. There are fires to be laid, and the whole frantic business of dinner for Mr. and Mrs. Robert to be got through.
       Did she arrive only a day ago? Weariness has settled deep into her bones, and she could believe that she has spent half her life in this place, treading up and down the stairs with buckets and mops, emptying ashes and cinders out of fireplaces, washing her hands again and again so that they are clean enough to smooth sheets and carry trays. Was it only this afternoon that she was sitting at the kitchen table with a policeman keeping an eye on her? It feels as though weeks have passed since then.
       She gets onto her knees to lay rolls of newspaper and splints of wood across the grate in the drawing room fireplace. Then she picks lumps of coal from the scuttle and lays them on top, one by one. She is tired, and the next lump slips from the tongs and falls into her lap, and she could cry to see the dark trail it leaves across her apron when she'd thought to wear it another day at least. And her hand—without thinking she grabbed for the coal with her bare hand, and it is smudged too. Now she will have to be careful not to touch her face, or the paintwork of the door. She will have to go all the way downstairs to wash before she can turn back the bed. The very thought of it—of all those stairs—makes her long for this day to be over so she can curl under her blankets and give herself up to sleep.
       Her stomach murmurs and she presses both hands against it. Mrs. Johnson served beef and potatoes, but her stomach was so clenched she barely ate a mouthful. A hot meal for supper—Mrs. Saunders would have called it an extravagance, because didn't they have a proper meal at midday? Only, thought Jane, if you call the leavings from the upstairs dinner a proper meal, and only those leavings not good enough to be served again as soup or a stew.
       She loads more coal onto the fire—too much, perhaps—and takes a match from the mantelpiece. It catches easily enough and, with the fireguard in place, she sits back on her heels with her hands held out to catch the first flare of heat.
       There's a knock at the door. Sarah. "Mr. Robert wants to see you in the study," she says.
       "Me?"
       "Of course you. " She doesn't smile, just pulls