Jasmine's hands stilled.
"Edith," she whispered. "My name was Edith."
"Edith," Clara said, and it felt like laying a stone on a grave.
They did not say anything else. Jasmine buttoned the gloves. She pinned Clara's hair, and she brushed the rouge across her cheekbones with a thumb that shook, and when she was finished she stood back and looked at her work with a face that Clara would remember for a long time.
"You look beautiful," Jasmine said, and it sounded like an apology.
Then she went out, and closed the door, and Clara was alone with the candle and the silk and the sound of her own heart.
He came at ten.
Clara heard him in the corridor first. She would have known that walk anywhere by now, the loose-limbed, unhurried stride of a man who had never in his life been in a hurry to be anywhere unpleasant. He was whistling. Something light. Something with a tune that went up at the end like a question.
