now, simply by offering an interview to one of the weekly papers. The Faithfull Connection: Behind the Scenes in Woman-ist's Bachelor Household.
She forces herself on. "Also—I wonder if I could check your memory, a small point..."
"Certainly, madam."
Fido swallows. "The first time you met Mrs. Codrington—" The name's like a stain on the counterpane. "Do you happen to remember when that was?" The maid's lined face has stiffened.
"Was it towards the beginning of September? The sixth, I believe?" Fido sighs; how can the maid be expected to remember? "She came to tea that day. As did a military gentleman." It's ridiculous; she finds she can't say Anderson's name.
Johnson shakes her head, suddenly decisive.
"Of course, you'd have had no reason to make note of the date," Fido mutters, partly to herself.
"It was before that, madam."
This is what she dreads to hear. "You first laid eyes on Mrs. Codrington before the day she came to tea?"
The maid's nodding. "At least a week before that—the end of August, it must have been—though I didn't know who she was then, of course. She came by in a cab with the same gentleman," says the maid with pointed hostility, "and asked for you."
Fido's pulse is painful in her chest. "You're quite sure?"
"Yes, madam, it stuck in my mind because they didn't leave their names, though I asked of course," says the maid. "She—Mrs. Codrington—she wanted to know was this the correct address for Miss Faithfull. I said you were at your steam printing office on Farringdon Street, and would she like to leave a card? But she didn't. She just drove off in a hurry. The two of them did, I mean."
Fido's hand is over her mouth.
"So I'll bring up the milk now?"
"Never mind that," she manages to say, turning away. Waiting for the door to shut.
It was a conspiracy from the beginning, then. Helen, learning from the maid that Fido was in the City that afternoon, hovered outside her office with Colonel Anderson so they could pretend to bump into her, quite by chance. How beautifully it all worked out—Fido's asthma attack on the Underground, their visit to the press, the whole flurry of newfound intimacy ... And Fido, in her sparking soap-bubble of self-delusion, attributed the whole thing to providence!
Perhaps there is no providence, no fate, no grand plan, she thinks now. Perhaps we dig our own traps and lie down in them.
Her cheeks are encased in her cold fingers. Oh Helen, what wrong did I ever do you? Haven't I loved you with all my being, tried to save you, suffered untold humiliations for you?
But no, it occurs to her that she's looking at it from the wrong angle. The mortifying truth is that Fido's irrelevant: a convenient messenger, go-between, mouthpiece. Some handkerchief or umbrella. In Helen's tangled melodrama, Fido's is only a walk-on part. That's what leaves her sick and dizzy now; that's why this little lie about Farringdon Street hurts more than all the other, graver ones. The joke is that Helen is probably not guilty of any malice towards Fido. She's dealt her a mortal blow, but carelessly, as one might drop a book.
Does that make it better? No, worse. I'd rather count, Fido decides, lifting her face.
She heaves a long breath, and squares her shoulders. She pads over to the dresser. In the jewellery box she finds the velvet choker, and she holds it taut in her fingers and marvels that she was ever charmed by such trash. With her thumbnails, she starts stripping off every dull bead, every last fragment of shell.
Knowledge like honey in her mouth: I can destroy her. I can do it tomorrow.
***
Fido, hovering at the back of the court, looks around the packed rows. Will she have to stand for hours? She's not sure she has the strength, after a sleepless night. But just then a gentleman stands to offer her his small portion of the bench, and she accepts with a grateful nod.
She's wearing her usual business costume of long-sleeved bodice and ankle-length skirt. (At first light, she put on her best dress—plum velvet, over a stiffened petticoat—then told herself it was rank hypocrisy and took it off again.) Nobody casts her a glance; her name may be somewhat famous, but her face, not at all. That will be different by the end of the day: everyone in this crammed courtroom will have memorized her features. (Please, no photograph in the papers!)
The tallest of the barristers rises. "I rejoice, gentlemen," he tells the