FOR THE REST OF THE DAY, STEAM ROSE steadily from the washhouse in Uncaster Hall as Aunt Mags and Gertie – purple and perspiring – battled with the weight of the sodden curtains and costumes.

Pa settled himself in the chilly drawing room to compose new songs for his version of King Lear, while Charlie helped Vinnie restring a banjo. Rosie, having discovered that Arabella was under the impression that potatoes grew on bushes and cabbages on trees, had made herself useful: a heap of washed vegetables was piled on the kitchen draining board. Arabella, exhausted by her lack of knowledge and general feelings of uselessness, had retired for a nap.

Once the chores were out of the way, Rosie and her new friend Edie set out together to visit the butcher’s shop. They were so deep in conversation that they didn’t notice a tall thin man striding towards them until he all but fell over them. As he recovered himself he dropped his leather case; Rosie picked it up for him, but instead of thanking her he snatched it away with a sharp exclamation of annoyance before striding off.

“What a horrible man!” Rosie said.

Edie nodded. “He nearly knocked me over yesterday.”

Rosie glanced over her shoulder at the departing figure. “Wonder where he’s off to in such a hurry?”

Arabella Poskett was woken from her nap by loud knocking at the front door. Aware that Edie was out, she put on her apron and went to see who it was, hoping against hope that it wasn’t the bailiffs.

When she saw it was Olio Sleevery she was relieved, while wondering at the same time why he had bothered to call. He had never been a friend: she had heard too much about his reputation as a harsh and unforgiving landlord and, as he neither hunted, gambled nor drank to excess, the Honourable Henry had considered him unworthy of notice.

“As you see, Mr Sleevery, my circumstances are sadly changed,” Arabella said. “I can offer little by way of refreshment after your journey…”

Olio Sleevery shook his head. “Only here to make you an offer,” he said baldly. “Heard you’re left with nothing but debts. Been talking to the shopkeepers. Bailiffs been here already.” Arabella took a step back; Olio stepped forward. “They’ll be back. Won’t leave you alone. Take all you’ve got. Now, I can make you an offer. This place? Crumbling. Worth nothing. But I’ll take it off your hands for five hundred pounds, contents included. That’ll pay your debts, and leave you enough for a cottage. Nice little cottage: just the thing for a widow-woman.”

“No, Mr Sleevery.” Arabella was shocked by his directness. “I have no intention of leaving Uncaster Hall. My son will inherit it when he comes of age, just as his father did before him. I have nothing more to say.” She tried to close the door, but Olio Sleevery’s foot was in the way.

“No more than I expected,” he said. “You’ll change your tune soon enough when the bailiffs are carting away your furniture. But I’ll keep offering. Only thing is, the offer goes down. Next time it’ll be four hundred and fifty. Remember that!”

He removed his foot, turned on his heel and marched away, leaving Arabella staring indignantly after him.

When Edie and Rosie got back carrying a heavy bag of bones, Arabella was wandering round the kitchen garden. She looked so lost that Rosie ran to her side.

“Are you missing your children?” she asked. “I’m so sorry. I miss my mother lots and lots, and my little brothers and sister too.” She found she was blinking back tears, and wiped her eyes with the edge of her shawl.

Arabella, surprised but pleased by this sympathy, smiled at Rosie and patted her head. She had not, in fact, been thinking about Hypatia and Affogato; she had been thinking about her debts and Olio Sleevery’s offer, and wondering if she had been foolish to dismiss him so high-handedly. Edie had given her a shilling from the six that the Steam Whistle Theatre Company had paid in rent, but it was all too obvious that one shilling a week was not going to solve her problems.

“Isn’t your mother going to join you, dear?” she asked.

Rosie shook her head. “We’ve got to be a success first. Ma can’t come unless we can send her the money for her ticket. We only just managed to pay for our own, you see … and we didn’t know what it would be like in the North. My little brother gets a bad chest ever so easily: we thought there might be snow and ice, and that would make him poorly.”

Edie giggled. “Snow, Rosie? This ain’t the North Pole!”

“I know that now,” Rosie said. “And Billy would be better here. There’s no smoke, and no fog … it’s the fog that makes him cough.”

“My little sisters coughed ever so much, all day and all night.” Edie, for the first time since Rosie had met her, stopped smiling. “They never got enough to eat once they put us in the workhouse, and as for the damp – why, you never saw anything like it! Them rooms where they kept the little ones was running with water some days.”

Rosie gazed at Edie, wide-eyed. “Where are they now?”

“Dead, Miss – I mean, Rosie.” Edie turned her back, and blew her nose on a rag from her pocket.

Rosie, horrified, hurried towards her, but Arabella was there first. “Poor, poor little girls,” she said, and folded Edie in her arms.

Edie stayed still for a long moment with her eyes tightly shut, then sniffed, smiled, and wriggled out of Arabella’s embrace. “No need to be sorry for me, Ma’am,” she said, “thanking you all the same. And there’s things we ought to be doing right now. We got bone broth to make! Got the biggest bones you ever did see… Think he liked Rosie’s pretty face. I’ll get started right now.” And she scuttled into the kitchen, clutching the bag of bones to her chest.

“Rosie dear, I’m sure I’ve already forgotten which vegetable is which.” Arabella, thinking Edie might like a moment to herself, waved a hand at the rows of carrots and cabbages.

Rosie began at once to point out the differences between beetroot and onions, but was interrupted by Charlie: “Pa wants you. He says you ought to start learning the new piece he’s written – he’s in the drawing room.”

Rosie opened her mouth to argue, but Arabella gave her a gentle push. “You can show me another time, dear.”

“I’d love to,” Rosie said … and she meant it.

A moment later she was skipping down the corridor to the drawing room, where the Steam Whistle Theatre Company’s very own King Lear was standing by the mantelpiece, practising his lines.

“Daughter!” Pa flung out his arms. “Come hither and stand by me, thy loving father!”

Ignoring the invitation, Rosie asked, “Have you got a new piece for me?”

Pa handed her a scrawled piece of paper. “Here, Cordelia my pet – and your father has surpassed himself. There’ll not be a dry eye in the house.”

Rosie settled down to read it. A moment later, she looked up. “I like it, Pa!”

“Of course you do.” Pa beamed at her. “And I had an idea worthy of William himself. Rosie, my darling – you’re going to sing the last words of Cordelia!”

“Sing?” Rosie considered the idea. “But we haven’t got a tune for it.”

Pa put his finger to his lips, and beckoned Rosie nearer before pointing at the dusty grand piano in the corner of the room. “I’ve been peeking and peering, Rosie my angel. There’s music on the stand! Songs! Delightful songs, written in that same looping hand that led us safely here – which leads me to suppose that our esteemed landlady, the gracious Mrs Poskett, is a pianist. Tonight I shall beg her to do us the honour of joining our little company … and we will make the sweetest of music!”

“Tonight? Aren’t we going to go and see the baby magician tonight, Pa?” Rosie asked.

Pa sighed, abandoned his dramatic pose, and put his arm round her. “I’m really sorry, pet. There’s no money for tickets: I wish there was, but there isn’t. As soon as we’re back in funds I’ll take you.”

Rosie picked up her script and went to curl up in a corner. Things must be really bad, she thought, if Pa’s talking like that.

She looked again at her new song. Once, long before, Ma had taken her and Charlie to a music hall to see Little Jolie Johnson, and when Little Jolie took her bow the audience had thrown pennies and threepenny bits and even sixpences and shillings onto the stage to show their appreciation. What if she could be as popular? The Steam Whistle Theatre Company would be rich, and Ma and the little ones could all come to Uncaster Hall…

Dreaming dreams of wealth and fame, Rosie fell asleep.