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Temperance shrugged. ‘She tracked me down. Sent one of the Ivys to my lodgings at three in the morning.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘None of your business.’

They were related all right. Maybe it was the lemonade talking, but I had to admit that it was nice to talk to Temperance again, even if she was never going to be fully honest with me. I remembered how Miss Decima had described her: our connection to the criminal underworld. She had mentioned a little of her childhood last year, and it was grim stuff. I wondered if that was the reason she was so good at thieving and lying and deception – murder, even. I wondered what she’d had to learn to do, just to survive.

‘I should go,’ she sighed. ‘I was supposed to be getting the Crace file for Miss Decima hours ago.’

I frowned. ‘How do you manage that? Infiltrating the police and taking whatever you want.’

‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’

‘Will you tell me?’

‘No.’

No surprises there. We stood up to leave, and I suddenly remembered something. ‘Hang on, why did you bring me here? You said there was a reason.’

A gleam came to her eyes. ‘Oh, yeah. See those drinkers?’

She pointed to the main room of the bar, still filled with that strange atmosphere. There must have been two dozen men drinking in absolute silence. It felt like the whole place would have gone up if you lit a match.

‘You know what’s at the Hall tonight? The Shakespeare Memorial Ball. A huge costume party, royalty invited from all over the world, everyone dressing up as stage characters. It’s got sky-high security, after what happened on Saturday.’

‘Okay,’ I said, still not understanding.

‘So,’ said Temperance, ‘I’ve been sending fake messages to every police department in the city, saying that people are going to bomb the Hall, and this pub’s going to be the meeting place for them. Fenians, socialists, anarchists, suffragists, anti-suffragists …’ She gestured to the public bar. ‘Every single man in there’s an undercover police officer, and they don’t realize it.’

I gazed around the pub in amazement. It all made sense now. Everyone was furtively glancing around while trying to pretend that they weren’t, because everyone thought everyone else was a terrorist.

‘Why?’ I asked, appalled.

‘For fun,’ said Temperance, gathering her shawls. ‘Shall we?’

With that, she walked out of the door without looking back.

37

Tuesday, 20 June, 1.04 p.m.

The heat was worse than ever as we made our way down Kensington High Street. The roads were so packed with carriages that we could barely see ten feet ahead of us, while coronation bunting flapped limply in the haze above. Temperance and I were forced to hunch together in the thin shade between buildings, shouldering through the sweltering crowds.

‘Blimey,’ I muttered, gazing around me. ‘You weren’t lying about that ball.’

You could already make them out: women in gowns and men in ruffs. I saw Titania fanning herself miserably in a café and Falstaff shouting at a dog-walker while trying to get his sword untangled from its leash. Inside a carriage garlanded with flowers sat two fairies, waving at passers-by.

‘Why are they out now?’ I said. ‘I thought you said it didn’t start until this evening.’

Temperance shook her head. ‘It’s the weather. It’s made everyone go mad.’

She was right there. And yet, despite all that – or maybe because of it – I felt lighter than I’d felt in days. Ever since the murder I’d been terrified of people following me, of watching eyes, convinced that every stranger on the street was a secret killer in disguise. Undercover police, conspiracies, Detectiphones … they had all been curdling my thoughts. At least now I knew that it was Temperance who’d been following me, and I hadn’t been going mad.

‘This is me,’ she said, coming to a stop at Barkers. There was already a crowd waiting to flag down an omnibus. ‘You can wait with me, if you’d like.’

That was the joke of it all. I did want to wait with Temperance. I should have been looking for Peter; I should have been buying my hat; I should have been sprinting back home, thanking God that I hadn’t had my throat cut by the woman who’d tried to kill me twice, and then stalked me. But the fact was I would have paid any amount of money to say let’s go get an ice and take a walk with her, and for the day to carry on just as it was.

Then my eyes fell on a stone fountain across the road, with ERECTED BY THE TEMPERANCE SOCIETY carved into the front, and something struck me. ‘Hang on. What’s your name?’