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gone.’
    And it had not escaped my notice that I did not even cost a servant’s wages.
    The thump made my bedroom door shake. ‘Grace! Fetch my breakfast, you lazybones.’
    â€˜Father, please! A moment.’ I scrabbled about, bundling on my clothes as he hammered again. I feared the lock might break from its housing – I worried, too, that anyone passing might hear him. But when I finally unlocked my door and swung it open, the landing was empty. I found him downstairs in the parlour, lying twisted on the ground, drunk and helpless. I held my hand out to him, but he stared at it suspiciously, as if he didn’t know me, his only daughter.
    â€˜Away, you useless creature. Look at yourself, you scarecrow!’ It shamed me to see him like that, with the spittle on his lips and his breath foul from liquor. At some time in the night, after staggering home drunk, he had thrown last night’s supper against the wall. The remnants of my pease pudding had grown a brown crust and the bacon looked like rusty leather. It was no feast, but still, a morning’s labour had been spent to turn a few pennyworth of stony peas into a palatable dish. That’s how much you care for me, I thought.
    â€˜Come along, Father,’ I said gently. ‘Let me help you up.’
    He let me hoist him upright, his bulk pressing heavy on my shoulders, till he staggered on his own two feet. Then, with no warning, he swung out with his fist and hit me hard on the side of my head. I cried out and recoiled, dizzy from the blow. With lips pressed tightly, so he might not hear me whimper, I stumbled back upstairs to my chamber. There, a wet cloth against my thumping head, I surrendered to self-pity. I turned to my dear mother’s portrait, recollecting that happy season when she had sat for me each afternoon.
    No sooner had I wiped my face dry than a smart knock rapped at the front door. Passing downstairs to the parlour, I was grateful that Father had at least hauled himself up into a chair, from which he eyed me fiercely, as if I were to blame for all his troubles.
    â€˜Mr Croxon,’ I said, dismayed to see our landlord on the doorstep. ‘I hope all is in order?’
    Mr Croxon hesitated, then gave me a tight nod. He too had high-coloured cheeks; I wondered if he had come directly from the Quince and Salver.
    â€˜All could be put in order, yes, Miss Moore. With a little plain dealing.’
    Our landlord had once been a carpenter, before shrewd use of his small capital had allowed him to buy and put to rent a number of properties in the town. Once he had been Father’s customer too, and it was a credit to the man that he still tipped his hat in greeting, where many now cut him dead. I had not forgotten that it was thanks to Mr Croxon that we stayed on at Palatine House, for without his having made an arrangement with Father, we might have been turned out by bailiffs.
    He strolled past me and pulled up a chair beside my father. I listened at the door as they talked of news from France. Some dreadful machine had been invented to decapitate the French nobility, Mr Croxon recalled with some glee. ‘Had enough of French Liberty yet, eh, Moore?’ My father mumbled in reply; the fire for reform was dying within him. Like many Britons we had rejoiced at the Bastille’s fall, but now read each news despatch with horror.
    There could not have been a greater contrast between the two men: Mr Croxon smooth-faced and lively in his brass-buttoned coat and boots polished like glass, while Father looked a slovenly wreck, and no credit to my hours of laundering. As to the house – I did my best to keep up the old grandeur, but the tell-tale signs of a drunkard abounded, in stains on the carpet and a high smell of spirits.
    â€˜Right, to business. You back to your full senses yet, Moore?’
    â€˜Fetch some ale,’ Father barked. I brought it in, muttering an apology to Mr Croxon, and retreated.