‘No, Badger. It’s cathartic. I’ve kept it bottled up inside me for years. Now I have somebody I can tell it to. Already I can feel the benefit of letting the poison pour out at last.’ She pulled back and saw the pain in his eyes. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m being selfish. I didn’t realize what this was doing to you. I’ll stop now.’
‘No. If it helps you, let it all out. Go on. It’s hard for both of us, but this is one way I can get to know and understand you.’
‘You’ve become my rock.’
‘Tell me the rest.’
‘There’s not much more to tell. I was alone and the funeral took all the money I had left. I didn’t have enough to pay the rent. I didn’t know which way to turn. I took a job in the mill for two shillings a day. Curly had a friend with whom he had played chess and he and his wife took me in. I paid them what I could and helped his wife with their children.
‘One day a stranger came to visit me. She was very elegant and beautiful. She said she was a childhood friend of my mother’s but that they had lost track of each other. She had only heard my tragic story recently and had determined to find me and look after me for the sake of my mother’s memory. She was so kind and friendly that I went with her unquestioningly.
‘Her name was Mrs Ryan and she had a splendid house in London. She gave me my own room and new clothes. I had a tutor and a dancing teacher. A woman came twice a week to instruct me in etiquette. I had a riding instructor, and my own horse, a darling little filly called Hyperion. The strangest thing was how assiduously Mrs Ryan made me practise my German. She was quite ruthless. I had a succession of German teachers and worked with them for two hours a day, six days a week. I read aloud all the German newspapers and discussed them with my tutors. I read aloud histories of the German nation from the time of the Holy Roman Empire to the present. I did the same with the works of Sebastian Brant, Johann von Goethe and Nietzsche. Within the first year of this intensive study I could have passed readily as an educated native-born German speaker.
‘Mrs Ryan was like a mother to me. She knew so much about me and my family. She told me things about them that I hadn’t known. She knew how Curly had been tricked out of his company, and told me about Otto von Meerbach. We spoke of him often. She said he had murdered Curly just as surely as if it had been his finger on the trigger of the shotgun. Although I had never laid eyes on him, I began to hate him with a burning passion, and Mrs Ryan subtly fuelled the flames of my loathing. She had an important job in the government. Not until much later did I have any idea what it might be, but we spoke often about how privileged we were to be the subjects of such a noble monarch, and citizens of the most powerful and far-reaching empire the world had ever seen. We should welcome any opportunity to serve King and empire. We should train ourselves to meet any call that might be made on us. We should be ready to make any sacrifice that duty and patriotism demanded.
‘I took her words deep into my heart and worked even harder than she demanded. I was never given the opportunity to meet any men except the servants, my tutors and teachers, so I had never known how beautiful I was, or that most men would find me irresistible.’ She broke off and shook her head ruefully. ‘Oh dear. Please forgive me, Badger. That sounds terribly immodest.’
‘No. It’s the simple truth. You’re beautiful beyond the telling of it. Please go on, Eva.’
‘Beauty and ugliness are random occurrences. The difference is that beauty fades and becomes another form of ugliness. I place no value on mine, but others did. It was one of the three reasons why they chose me. The second was my intelligence.’
‘What was the third?’
‘I had suffered a terrible wrong, and I was eager for retribution.’
‘I find this fascinating in a dreadfully sinister way. My skin is beginning to creep.’
‘For my nineteenth birthday the dressmaker made me a magnificent ballgown. Mrs Ryan stood beside me as I tried it on for the first time. Together we looked at my reflection in the full-length mirror.
