I’m so tired, yet still wide-awake in my head. It’s spinning like a kaleidoscope. A nosy, friendly girl called Effie, with a face like an apple, is going to be my maid. She talks non stop! She said I was like Miss Lovington – “all golden and pretty and stuck in a cage.” What a cheek!

She’s already taught me a rude song from the music hall. Her brother’s a performer. The bed feels strange but I must try to sleep. All I have to cling to is the knowledge that, in a few weeks time it’ll be my thirteenth birthday and I’ll inherit the Marchmont chest. Then I can try and find Papa and go back to school. Missing-feared-drowned does not mean dead...