I chose blue. Peacock blue. Could I really pick any other colour?
It hung neglected, towards the back of the lumber room, almost concealed by worsted and gaudy chintz. But it caught my eye, beckoned to me. And when I ran my hands over the grain, it was like brushing my own skin.
Perhaps it had been there all along, waiting for me in the room where I last saw my mother. Ma was in my mind as I unfurled ripple upon ripple of that blazing blue. It yielded easily to my scissors; thread and fibre parting to make way for the blade. Pliable. Unlike flesh.
Was I out of my wits? Maybe. But at least I wasn’t afraid any more. The horror had set me free in a strange way: knowing I’d reached the abyss.
With the greenish-blue material folded into waves over my arms I marched, determined, through the showroom and into my alcove.
‘What’s that?’ Mrs Metyard boomed. It was Mrs Metyard, stripped of her facial hair and, it seemed, the memory of what she’d done ‘Come here! Girl!’ She flung back the curtain. ‘What do you think you are doing?’
‘Working.’ I sat myself at the table, unfolded my roll of knives. A dark crust remained on the blades. How far I’d come, I thought, from my little cloth book of needles at home.
‘There’s plenty of work for you upstairs. Do you think I am going to let you dally about down here, when there’s so much to do for the wedding?’
I gripped a knife in my hand. ‘It’s not my fault if you insist on killing the help.’
Something happened to her features then: a swift blast of the captain, fighting to resurface. She mastered him, pushed him down. I don’t know what she would have done next, if Kate’s peevish tones hadn’t stopped her.
‘Mother, I need you. Come quickly.’
She gave me a long, cold stare. Then she left.
It was time to begin.
No shoulder straps on this one. Front-fastening, split busk, lightly boned. Lace at the top and bottom. Then over the breasts, and in the curves of the waist, I’d embroider peacock feathers in brown, purple and green. A masterpiece. Like Pa said, the art that was the true me: beautiful and deadly.
I knew the measurements by sight. That waist of twenty inches. Why not make it eighteen? Sixteen? Squeeze the evil out, crush it, until there was nothing left but a tightly wound shroud of my stitches.
Blue. Endless blue before me. It might have been the sea for Mim to sail across. She might have been safe and happy, if it weren’t for Kate. Kate must feel her pain. Kate would feel it all, and Mim would help.
For it wasn’t just whalebone in that corset. I added slithers. Little pieces of Mim’s bone fish, shaved down, pushing back against her oppressor in the only way she could, now. Scraps of the old corset, spotted with my own blood. The both of us, against Kate.
Through all the long hours I worked, my hand didn’t shake. Not once. Nor did my eyes tire. I refused to take meals with the other girls, only creeping to the kitchen to grab crusts of bread and a sip of water when all lay quiet. How could I eat in that place, knowing what lurked beneath?
‘What have you been doing?’ Ivy would rail at me, when we went to bed. ‘Too good to work with us now, are you?’
I laughed in her face.
‘She’s lost it,’ Daisy said, edging away.
‘Best leave her be,’ decided Nell.
Not once did they ask what Kate had wanted with me and my tools that day. Not once did they hear Mim’s poor blood, calling out for justice while they ate.
I wonder if they heard, as I did, the creak that came at night.
It might have been the old corset, beneath my pillow.
It might have been the rotting timber of my heart.