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crashed into the door, struggling to remain upright, and ran to my old bedroom down the corridor. My heart was pounding in my throat and my stomach was knotted in my shoes. I felt upside down as I threw open the door, slammed it and locked it behind me. The door shook with John’s knocking and he tried the handle, calling all the while to me.
    “Imogen. Let me in. Imogen.”
            And so he went on; all the while I shut out the sounds of the truth and, instead, turned my head back to the lies. In the gloom of my childhood room, I could see my mother’s face in the mirror on my wedding day, the look in her eyes as she had chewed on the words of how she had felt on the morn of her own wedding. I knew now why she had been so evasive. The lie of it and the truth of it had been that there had been no wedding. The truth of it was that my father was a woman.
     

Chapter Two- Avery, 1869
     
    Through the crack in the heavy linen curtains, a shard of light edged itself across a fine rug. Like a dusty finger, it pointed accusingly at the bed and its sleeping occupant. The first fronds of pale grey morning stretched themselves, as if from a weary sleep and tried to penetrate Avery’s dreams beneath the crisp linen sheets. His head rested heavily on the plump pillows. His thick, sleep-ruffled hair, a dark contrast to the white of the linen, was the same colour as the mahogany furniture which loomed from the edges of the room. Avery was in the middle of a dream. His eyes, shielded by sleep-weary lids, flickered, seeing yet not seeing his hidden fantasy.
            It is summer in his dream and the sun is brighter than the gloom of his bedroom. There is a lake which, at first glance, appears deserted. Stirring the stillness of the velvet greens of the surrounding parkland and the cornflower blue sky, there is a couple picnicking. They are shielded from view by the dancing yellow-green skirts of a willow tree. From the path, anyone watching could make out a young lady attired in a plain white dress, lounging against some cushions scattered about the picnic blanket; her hat has been cast aside, and some curls from her hair have come loose and now frame her pale face with auburn. She is Kate Ward and, in truth, she is a young servant girl in the Silvers’ house; far from enjoying a picnic on a day like this, she should be working up a sweat cleaning silver or changing bed linen. The young man leaning over her is Avery Silver. He is Avery Silver as he appears to himself.
            Avery is smartly dressed, from his polished shoes to his immaculate shirt, his expensive jacket and trousers to the luxury oil taming his thick mahogany locks. A cooling breeze picks up off of the lake, beside which they lay, and carries the scent of the picnic and the sound of their hushed laughter and mumbling. Avery has exaggerated his own body shape; his shoulders aren’t usually that broad, he isn’t normally quite so tall.  Avery’s back obscures the view of Kate and you would have to be almost upon them before her state of undress is revealed. Avery is leaning across her, one hand tugging down an arm of her summer dress to reveal her firm pale breast. Her nipple, despite the warmth of the summer’s day, is pert and erect and it is this nipple that Avery now takes in his mouth. Kate’s head lolls backwards and she bites her lower lip, allowing the small sigh of pleasure rising in her throat to escape her.
            In the bedroom in which the sleeping Avery lay dreaming, the sounds of morning began to fill the air as, one by one, the birds in the square outside shook themselves awake. Avery’s leg moved beneath the sheets and created a ripple of white light in the beam of dawn, like a river cresting over a rock. The sound of broken glass punctuates the silence in the room and Avery’s head reared up briefly. His eyes, heavy with sleep, look about, confused as he noted only the intrusion of the dawn. His thick chestnut