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It’s true that once or twice I was put out with him – when there was some fact of my life, some preference that he’d learnt a dozen times and still did not remember.

I knew what he liked at supper, knew his sister’s name.

Treasured the truths of him like hoarded pearls.

Wept sometimes, that he could never know me so.

But then I would have a nightmare, in my long sleep after the ball was done, that I was back in that Brussels hospital, with wounded and broken men on either side, and they all had Edward’s face.

And I would be reminded anew that perhaps Edward did not know me, but that there was also no chance for us of heartbreak or despair or betrayal.

That horrible battle was always tomorrow, but at least it was never today.

Aunt Irene demanded, “What has happened to you?” and I heard Mr Lewis say, with horror, “Christ almighty, Sue, your feet.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. You’re skin and bone, and your face—”

“It’s nothing!” cried Sue. “You told me to be nothing to you and so I am! Nothing!”

I agreed with her, silently. Nothing mattered, nothing could possibly matter in this wrecked and dusty world. We only lived for the night, for those hours before the end, when all was yet perfect.

Another night came. By now Sue and I were putting on our party dresses together, laughing as we did our hair.

Susan dabbed rouge over our cheekbones, and if I was momentarily disturbed at how starkly the rouge stood out on my pallor, like a corpse’s makeup, I forgot it soon enough, in favor of putting perfume on my neck.

“God,” said Sue. “How the time does crawl. I want to dance with my highlanders again.” She was twitchy, eager, and so was I, imagining how I would be to dear Edward tonight, if I would meet him as a tempestuous storm of a woman, or a sweet, shy girl, knowing he would love me instantly regardless.

And sure enough, at midnight, the music started and we ran through the hallways, laughing.

During the day our feet did hurt abominably; I was worried I’d glimpsed a little speck of bone in the ruin of my blisters, but I hid them carefully from Father and Aunt Irene, and anyway it didn’t matter at night. Our feet never hurt at night.

The ballroom had become more familiar to me than any bedroom I’d ever had; the rose-trellis pattern on the wall, the parquet of the floor, the faces of the dear musicians.

Sue and I separated, as was our custom. She was instantly engulfed in admirers, and I went straight to Edward.

I had decided I wanted to be myself that night, more or less: bookish and sharp and serious.

But he still greeted me with courtesy and listened to my opinions and laughed at my jokes.

Every night he fell in love with me. Every night I loved him more.

He does not know you , a voice in my heart whispered, but I shoved it away. He did not need to.

Standing on the edge of the dance floor, on the precipice of that joyful whirl, I said, my voice shaking with feeling, “I wish the night would not stop.”

“Then let it not stop,” he said, smiling down at my face, and we pelted out into the dance.

But something was wrong.

Cries suddenly arose from every part of the ballroom; the music lurched to an ungainly halt, and the dancers stumbled into each other as the rhythm faltered and died.

Dear Edward kept me from grief with a hand on the small of my back.

Then he put his hand on his ceremony-sword, saying, “What the devil is this?”

For a monster had come to the ballroom.

The monster stood in the middle of the dance floor, head a little bowed. His hair was thick and dark except where it had been seared away. His face was young and kind and ordinary except where it was seamed with wormlike scars that twisted up his mouth; one ear was a lump, one eye was glass.

Women screamed; the atmosphere of wondrous unreality was shattered. I felt my stomach close and cramp. As though time in its damnable marching had been given a face and come with funereal tread into my sanctuary.

And the monster said, “Sue? What is this? What are you doing? What is this place?”

To my horror, my sister stepped out of the throngs of frightened people. “Does it matter? What are you doing here?”

“I came looking for you. I was afraid for you.”

“You don’t have the right to be afraid for me!” she cried. “You gave me up! Go away and let me dance!”

She tried to dart back among the highlanders, and I breathed a sigh of relief, but the monster caught her round the waist and held her to him. “No,” he said. “Can’t you see it? No. Whatever this place is, it’s not real. It’s killing you.”

She laughed wildly. “Not real? It’s more real than you and I. You told me we were nothing, but this – this is something, at least.”

He shook her a little. “No it isn’t. I may be half-blind now, but I can see that clear enough.

” The unmarred side of his face mingled wonder and nostalgia and a well-marked contempt when he looked us all over, all the beauties of that perfect night, and I had never hated him more.

“It’s just pretty shadows. And you’re everything, Sue. Everything in the whole world.”

“No I’m not. You shoved me away. I love you and you said it was nothing!”

“Because I knew that if I admitted that I love you still, I would catch you and hold you and keep you, even if it was your ruin. I didn’t want to do that. Not to you, never to you, my love.”

She was starting to cry. “I wanted you to.” I saw their tears mingling and I thought with horror that he would make her do it, would drag her with him back out into the terrible daylight, to love a man who has lost his ear and his eye and all his joy, where days would turn to weeks turn to months turn to tears…

“Sue!” I screamed, trying to reach her, clutching on to Edward’s hand, as I pulled him along the floor.

“Sue, come here, come back, tell him to go away.” I was crying too.

Susan reached out to me, but Edward was an anchor, dragging on my arm.

I could not reach my sister’s hand without dropping his.

Susan’s fingers brushed mine, but that was all, and then Mr Lewis caught her round the waist and pulled her to him, and next moment she was gone from the ballroom, gone as though she’d never been.

***

I suppose these last words must be mine.

Arthur and I found ourselves quite alone, standing in our nightclothes in that infernal ballroom, but there was no music and no lights and no flowers and no candles.

Just the electric bulb, swinging, and the sound of a mouse as it ran along the wall. My feet were all over blood.

There was no sign of Alice.

I hurt my fists on the mirrors and sobbed out her name while Art held me.

But there was no answer. No sound of voices, nor of music.

Only a horrible, scratchy silence. The daylight was trickling in through the shuttered windows when at last Arthur picked me up, strong despite his poor face, and carried me away.

There was an investigation, of course. The poor old frozen garden was quite dug up. They didn’t find her, though. No one ever found her.

Art and I got married. We stayed in the house for weeks, in Brussels for months. At first I’d go back every night, to listen for the music and call out to my sister.

But she never answered.

Do you hear me Alice, my dear wretch? I hope at least you are happy in your ballroom of dreams and of dust, and that you still hear music where I only hear a mouse’s scurrying.

Alice, tell me you are there.

Alice.

I stayed in the ballroom all night, that last night in Brussels, and Arthur stayed with me, so fiercely alive, after the cobweb dreams of the Duchess of Richmond’s ball.

I must have dozed off near dawn, for I had nightmares of my sister weaving through dancers, just out of reach, her hair unmistakable, her smiling face gray.

I woke up calling her name, and Art woke with me and whispered, “Sue – look.”

I looked, and looked and was utterly silent, except for my tears. Alice was gone. But I’d woken up with a single white rosebud, tight-furled, never to bloom, caught between my fingers.