Chapter 14: Every Man in the Room

The Gilt Room at four in the afternoon smelled of floor polish and old smoke.

Nobody at the door asked my name.

The man there had seen me kneel on the block, and he stepped aside and looked at the floor.

Elsa came down the stairs with her hair loose and her arms already open.

"You came," she said. "Alone. Good girl."

"Don't call me that."

She stopped, and the warmth on her face thinned.

"Of course. I'm sorry. Come up."

Her office was at the end of a corridor lined with red velvet.

There was a desk, a lamp, a safe in the wall, and a long couch, and on the desk sat a leather trunk with a brass lock.

"Her things," Elsa said. "Letters, mostly. Your mother wrote to a man she never married, and he kept every one."

"Why do you have them?"

"He gave them to me when he was dying. I was twenty-three, and I was kind to him."

She turned the key and lifted the lid.

I knelt on the carpet and touched the top envelope.

It was blue, with Claire's handwriting on it, and I could not read it for a minute because my eyes had filled.

"Take your time," Elsa said. "I'll bring tea."

She left, and the door clicked behind her.

I read until the light changed.

The letters spoke of a baby, of a hospital, of a man who wanted her in his house and a council that wouldn't hear of it.

In the last one my mother wrote: If anything happens, take her to Sergio. He is the only one of them who will keep her safe.

I was crying when the door opened.

I thought it was Elsa with the tea.

It was a young man in a grey suit, and he held a glass in his hand and looked me over from the floor to the top of my head.

I knew him.

He was the visitor's son from the council table, the one who had brought the companion.

"I thought it was you," he said. "The little pet. They keep you in a collar like a dog, don't they?"

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