Bifrons, Kent
February 1829

Miss Stamp has gone, and there will never be another governess to match her. I am quite sure of it.

She left, as she said she would, just before Christmas. I cried on the morning of her departure, refusing at first to go downstairs to say goodbye. It was Nanny Briggs, who always thinks about the well-being of everyone in the household, who persuaded me that Miss Stamp would be sad if she and I were unable to say our farewells in person.

‘I have a gift for you,’ Miss Stamp said, as the last of her trunks was hoisted onto the roof of the carriage.

Red-eyed, I accepted the pages, which were tied together with pale pink ribbon. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s something of yours, actually.’

I looked down. It was my story – the one that I had worked on with such care in Geneva – ‘The Mystery of the Blue Windmill’.

‘I... I didn’t think it was very good,’ I said.

Angered by what I perceived as its imperfections, I had thrown it away; Miss Stamp had quietly retrieved it from the waste-paper basket and brought it back to England. There she had copied the story out in her beautifully neat writing, and kept it until it was time to bid me goodbye.

‘I did,’ she said, as she kissed me. ‘I thought it was very good. You’ll achieve great things, Ada. I know you will. But you must believe in yourself.’

Mamma was watching this exchange. She said nothing, but she was wearing one of her many Mamma-expressions, all of which I am adept at reading. This particular one – a pinched, tight, nostril-flared look – suggested to me that she, personally, was not sure that I would achieve anything of note, and certainly not by means of writing stories.

I think about Miss Stamp often – she is married now, of course, but I will always think of her as Miss Stamp. I hope that she is happy, and wonder if she misses me at all. The days, so full of excitement and colour and interest when we were abroad, feel dull and flat now, like a landscape of scattered rocks and dried-up rivers and dust. Even Puff gives me less pleasure than she usually does – really, she has turned quite feral now, and spends all her time tracking down mice in darkened corners. I feel listless, achy, uninterested in things. Where I used to feel ups and downs – those winged emotional states that I tried, once, to explain to Miss Stamp – now I feel a sort of level lowness. It is as though there is a heavy coverlet on top of me – one made of lead, or woven rope – a coverlet that I cannot lift.

One rainy February morning, I find that I cannot get out of bed.

‘I don’t... I don’t feel right,’ I say, slowly, to the chambermaid. ‘My head...’

The chambermaid goes to fetch Nanny Briggs. She is gone a long time; I try again to get out of bed, and fail. It is as though the various parts of my body have ceased communication. At last, my nurse appears. It is difficult to explain to her how I am feeling. She presses a hand to my forehead.

‘You’re running a fever, Miss Ada,’ she mutters. She peels back the cuff of my nightgown, and exposes a ruddy, raised rash that extends all along my arm. ‘It may be that you’ve caught the measles,’ she says.

I don’t want measles. I’ve had chickenpox before, long ago, and remember only too well the sweltering, soporific itchiness of it; the muddle-headedness. ‘I don’t have time to be ill,’ I fret, as Nanny Briggs changes my nightgown. ‘I’m working on Flyology. If I don’t invent the machines, then... then someone else will!’

‘Hush now, and don’t babble,’ she soothes. ‘You’ll be right as rain in no time.’

She holds a cool, damp flannel to my forehead. It feels wonderfully comforting. Perhaps she is right: I will just rest for a day or two, until the worst of the illness passes, and then I can return to my study: to Flyology, and my books, and everything else that I enjoy.

But it is a long, long, long time – three years, all told – before I am well enough to get out of bed again.