‘I will not ask,’ the man with the tiny spectacles is saying, ‘how you did it, but I would say that there is no pregnancy.’ It is not the new apothecary. I do believe it is Dr Hughes, who treats the family. He feels my belly through my shift, a nice clean one Nurse has found for me. ‘But there must be no more treatment. The child is young and her constitution still delicate. Any further remedies and she might not be able to have children of her own. And that would not do, would it, Missy?’ he asks, touching my cheek with the back of a finger, the way Mrs Baird fusses the kitchen cat that sleeps with her, not Cook, at night. But that is our secret.
What happened in the library was our secret, he said, and already people know about it.
What will become of me now?