She never managed to match her speech to the cadence of theirs, never quite correctly timed a joke or a laugh.

Violet had never much liked the idea of being married. She would have been quite happy to pursue her ambitions alone,

He climbed down from the stand slowly, and I saw his age in his faltering movements. The intimidating figure I remembered from childhood was diminished.

I might have been another of the crows, who welcomed me silently with their glittering eyes.

Might it be possible to have both things? Love and insects? Perhaps Frederick would fall in love with her, and then, once they were married, would be quite happy for her to become a world-travelling scientist. But even as these thoughts made her feel warm and light inside, doubt rolled in like a dark cloud.

She kept her other books – Grimms’ Fairy Tales; The Secret Garden – the stories that became a salve during those long nights when the only sign of life from her mother’s bedroom was the neon glow of the television under the door. Fiction became a friend as well as a safe harbour; a cocoon to protect her from the outside world and its dangers.

As if Kate herself is something to be unwrapped, to be torn open.

as if they were heavenly beings, rather than meat and bone like the rest of us.

Father planned to throw a big party for her ‘coming out’. Then – he hoped – she would catch the eye of some eligible young man, a lord-to-be, perhaps, and swap this prison for another one.