I wanted to order Margaret to stop, for the pathos of a girl feeding on another’s scraps of polite dances and indifferent card games upset me, bringing to mind an image of Mary standing outside the Assembly Rooms and pressing her face to the cold glass to watch the dancers. Though I had never seen her do so, I would not have been surprised to learn that she had. I held my tongue, however, for I knew Margaret meant well, and was providing the little comfort Mary had in her life at the time. I was grateful too that Margaret never told Mary I had briefly been with Colonel Birch at the Assembly Rooms, for Mary would have wanted me to recall every detail of that afternoon.

Though it would not be proper to initiate correspondence herself, Mary hoped and expected to hear from Colonel Birch. She and Molly Anning occasionally received letters, from William Buckland asking after a specimen, or Henry De La Beche telling them where he was, or other collectors they’d met and who wanted something from them. Molly Anning was even corresponding with Charles Konig at the British Museum, who had bought Mary’s first ichthyosaurus from William Bullock and was interested in buying others. All of these letters continued to arrive, but in amongst them there was never the flash of Colonel Birch’s bold, scrawling hand. For I knew his hand.

I could not tell Mary that it was I who heard from Colonel Birch, a month after he’d left Lyme. Of course it was not a letter declaring himself, though as I opened it my hands trembled. Instead he asked if I would kindly look out for a dapedium specimen, of the sort I had donated to the British Museum, as he was hoping to add choice fossil fish to his collection. I read it out to Margaret and Louise. “The cheek of it!” I cried. “After his scorn of my fish, to go and ask me for one, and one so difficult to find!” As angry as I sounded, I was also secretly pleased that Colonel Birch had discovered the value of my fish enough to want one for himself.

Still, I made to throw the letter on the fire. Margaret stopped me. “Don’t,” she pleaded, reaching for it. “Are you sure there’s nothing about Mary? No postscript, or a coded message to her or about her?” She looked over the letter but could find nothing. “At least keep it so that you’ll know where he lives.” As she said this Margaret was reading the address-a street in Chelsea -doubtless memorising it in case I burned the letter later.

“All right, I will put it away,” I promised. “But I will not answer it. He doesn’t deserve an answer. And he will never get his hands on any of my fish!”

We did not tell Mary Colonel Birch had written to me. It would have devastated her. I had never expected such a strong character as Mary’s to be so fragile. But we are all vulnerable at times. So she continued to wait, and talk, and ask Margaret to describe Colonel Birch’s conduct at the Assembly Rooms, and Margaret did it, though it pained her to lie. And slowly the bloom left Mary’s cheeks, the bright light in her eyes dimmed, her shoulders took on their habitual hunch, and her jaw hardened. It made me want to weep, to see her joining the ranks of us spinsters at such a young age.

One sunny winter day I had a surprise visitor to Silver Street. I was out in the garden with Louise, who missed working during the cold months and was looking for something she could do: spreading mulch around sleeping plants, checking on the bulbs she had planted, raking stray leaves that had blown into the garden, pruning back the rose bushes that persisted in growing. The cold did not bother us as it would have once, and in the sun it was surprisingly warm. I was finishing a watercolour of the view towards Golden Cap, which I had begun months before, but brought out again with the hope that the oblique winter sunlight might give the painting the magic quality it yet lacked.

I was adding a yellow wash to the clouds when Bessy appeared. “Someone to see you,” she muttered. She stepped aside to reveal Molly Anning, who in the many years we’d lived there had never ventured up Silver Street.

Bessy’s scorn vexed me. Despite my friendship with the Annings, Bessy all too readily took on the views of the rest of Lyme about the family, even when she had seen enough of Mary to form her own judgement. I punished her by standing and saying, “Bessy, bring out a chair for Mrs Anning, and one for Louise, and tea for all of us, please. You don’t mind sitting outside, Molly? In the sun it’s quite mild.”

Molly Anning shrugged. She was not the sort to take pleasure in sitting in the sun, but she would not stop others doing it.

I raised my eyebrows at Bessy, who was lingering in the doorway, clearly livid at the thought of having to wait on someone she considered lower than herself. “Go on, Bessy. Do as I ask, please.”

Bessy grunted. As she disappeared inside, I heard Louise chuckle. Bessy’s moods were greatly entertaining to my sisters, though I still fretted that she might walk out on us, as her slumped shoulders often threatened. After all this time she persisted in making clear that our move to Lyme had been a disaster. For Bessy my relations with the Annings represented all that was jumbled and wrong about Lyme. Bessy’s a social barometer was still set to London standards.

I didn’t care, except that it might mean losing a servant. Nor did Louise. Margaret I suppose lived the most conventional life here, still occasionally attending the Assembly Rooms, visiting other good Lyme families and doing charitable work for the poor. The salve she had created to soothe my chapped hands she took with her everywhere, distributing it to whoever needed it.

I gestured to my chair. “Do take a seat, Molly. Bessy will bring another.”

Molly Anning shook her head, uneasy about sitting while I stood. “I’ll wait.” She seemed to understand Bessy’s judgement that we should not have Annings as visitors; indeed, perhaps she agreed with her, and it was that rather than the climb up the hill that had kept her from Morley Cottage all this time. Now her eyes rested on my watercolour, and I found myself embarrassed-not for the quality of the painting, which I already knew was not good, but because what had been a pleasure to me now seemed a frivolity. Molly Anning’s day began early and ended late, and consisted of many hours of backbreaking work. She barely had time even to look at a view, much less to sit and paint it. Whether or not she felt that way, she showed nothing, but moved on to inspect Louise’s pruning. This at least was less frivolous-though not much less so, for roses serve little purpose other than to dress a garden, and feed no one other than bees. Perhaps Louise felt similar to me, for she hurried to finish the bush she was trimming and laid down her pruning knife. “I’ll help Bessy with the tray,” she said.

As more chairs were brought out, and a small table on which to place the tray, and finally the tray itself-all accompanied by huffs and sighs from Bessy-I began to regret my suggestion to take tea outside. It too seemed frivolous, and I had not meant to cause such a fuss. Then as we sat, the sun went behind a cloud and it instantly grew chilly. I felt an idiot, but would have even more so if I then said we ought to troop back inside, reversing the move of furniture and tea. I clung to my shawl and cup of tea to warm me.

Molly sat passively, allowing the bustle of cups and saucers and chairs and shawls to take place around her without comment. I rattled on about the unusually clement weather, and the letter I’d had from William Buckland saying he’d be down in a few weeks, and how Margaret couldn’t join us because she was taking some of her salve to a new mother sore from nursing. “Useful, that salve,” was Molly’s only comment.

When I asked how they fared, she revealed why she had come to see us. “Mary ain’t right,” she said. “She ain’t been right since the Colonel left. I want you to help me fix it.”