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  ‘I lost my dear mama when I was ten, and already a foot taller than her,’ she said. ‘None of my family are similarly afflicted. My father and brothers are normal height and my mother was tiny like you – but she loved me dearly and never reproached me for growing to such a size.’

  ‘Oh, Freda! Of course she didn’t! How could you help growing?’

  ‘My father was ashamed of me. He kept me in a dark cupboard for months after Mama died, hoping it might restrict my growth.’

  ‘How terrible!’

  ‘And then, when I was fourteen, he sold me to a travelling fair, to be displayed as a freak of nature.’ Freda sighed and the whole bed trembled. ‘It was very hard at first, but now I am used to it. Mr Clarendon is kinder than most and treats me fairly enough. It is a little lonely at times, living with so many strange men – but now I have you for company, Emerald! You must not be frightened of me, even though I am so very big and queer-looking.’

  ‘I am not the slightest bit frightened of you, Freda dear – and I am charmed to share a room with such a kind, gentle lady,’ I said, and I meant every word.

  As the weeks went by we grew as close as sisters. We breakfasted together while the men were still fast asleep. Freda did not care to stroll along the promenade because people would stare so and shout after her, but she liked to sit in the garden at the back of the lodgings and get a little fresh air that way. I’d sit with her and we’d chat while I sewed.

  I embroidered little pink roses around the neck and cuffs and hem of Freda’s large nightgown, which utterly delighted her. I was making a lot of money from tips, so I decided to make Freda a proper present. I went back to the draper’s shop and bought several yards of blue silk and set about fashioning her a proper lady’s costume. She had only her bathing dress and her nightgown and a shabby man’s coat to keep her warm in winter. She cried with joy when she held the lengths of silk and felt their softness.

  ‘But they are far too fine for me, Emerald. I will tear them to shreds.’

  ‘Not if I make you a costume that fits you properly. I will sew it very carefully, with tiny strong stitches. Just be patient, Freda. You are going to have such a beautiful dress, I promise.’

  I did my very best to keep my word. I had to stand on a borrowed ladder to measure Freda from her shoulders to her ankles, and we both blushed painfully when I had to stretch the tape to measure her chest and waist and hips, but once these indignities were out of the way and I could start sewing, we had an extremely companionable time together.

  Freda offered to read aloud to me from the little fairy-tale books Mama had given me. I had never let anyone else even touch them before, but I found it curiously soothing for Freda to read in her soft husky voice, holding the tiny tales reverently in her huge hands. I became agitated when she started reading the tale of Jack the Giant Killer – but Freda was fascinated, astonished to discover a story about distant relatives. She didn’t mind that the giants were all treated as villains by the anonymous author. She seemed to like it that they were very fierce and tried to catch little people and feed them to their ogre children.

  When she’d read her way through all the tales, I did my best to make up a few fairy stories myself featuring Fearless Freda and tiny Emerald Mermaid. She loved these stories so much that I wrote them down for her when I’d finished her costume at last.

  Oh, how she loved her blue silk costume! She trembled all over when I made the final fitting, stroking her own arms, marvelling at the softness of the silk. I detached the mirror from the wall and held it up for her so that she could see herself in sections, and she gave little squeals of joy.

  I could not fashion her real kid or leather boots to set off her dress because I did not have the right skills – nor indeed, tools – but I managed to make her matching blue silk gaiters that came up to her calves. I reinforced the soles with thickest cardboard, stuck on with my glue.

  ‘I’m afraid you won’t be able to walk very far in them, Freda,’ I said regretfully, but she still seemed delighted.

  She wore her new costume very proudly while on display at the curiosity tent. Mr Clarendon made her a new painted background of the promenade, with tiny figures all pointing and exclaiming at the very fine figure of Fantastic Freda, the Fashionable Female Giant.

  He had made me a backdrop too – of blue sea and yellow sand – and he displayed me on a pile of real sand stolen from the beach. Folk marvelled at Freda, but I knew I was now the main attraction. I think it was only the very little children who believed I was a real mermaid – but all the lads and gentlemen clustered around me eagerly, and even their ladies clapped their hands and declared I was as pretty as a picture.

  I simpered and smiled for all I was worth, even when some of the louder lads made extremely uncouth remarks about me, because I wanted them to stuff my housekeeping jar with tips. I kept it by my side, painted with sea anemones and decorative fish, and by the end of each evening it was crammed to the brim. Every time someone dropped another coin into the jar with a satisfying clink I thought of Mama and how it meant I could stay close to her.

  I bought her little delicacies every day, and bribed a kind ward orderly at the infirmary to take them in to her: little jars of custard cream, small bottles of fortified wine, a perfect bunch of hothouse grapes. Mama always smiled and nodded and mouthed her thanks to me when I looked at her through the window – but she seemed to be getting thinner and thinner, and even when she lay as still as a statue in bed, the coughing tore her apart.

  Then, one terrible evening, she started haemorrhaging as she coughed, blood seeping through her fingers as she clutched her mouth. I heaved the heavy glass window upwards with sudden desperate strength, climbed right through, and ran to her bed. As she coughed and bled, I held her tight and stroked her, and told her that I loved her over and over again, until she was still at last. I held her poor lifeless body and would not let her go. The nurses let me stay there on the bed with Mama, knowing they could not prise me away.

  I went on whispering to her, even though I knew she could no longer hear me. I told her that she was the best mother in the whole world. I went through all the tender kindnesses she’d shown me through the years at the hospital, until the ward grew dark.

  Then a nurse came and whispered softly, ‘We must tidy your dear mother, child.’

  I helped wash her and comb her tousled hair. The nurse snipped me off a lock to keep for ever. We gave Mama a clean nightgown and folded her poor thin arms neatly over her sunken chest. I tucked the satin pouch containing my letters under her fingers so that she might read them in Heaven and remember just how much I loved her.

  ‘We will have to make the funeral arrangements,’ said the nurse. ‘I expect it will have to be a pauper’s funeral …’

  ‘No! No, I will pay for Mama to have a proper decent funeral,’ I said firmly.

  I went to the undertaker’s with my jar of tip money – to find it still wasn’t nearly enough. Dear Freda insisted on giving me the rest. It wasn’t a grand funeral. At the undertaker’s they outlined various options: beautiful ornate oak caskets with golden handles, black carriages drawn by a matching pair of black horses with plumes, professional mourners in top hats and tails … I selected the simplest funeral possible: a plain coffin, a horse and cart to carry it to the graveyard, and no paid mourners at all – only me.

  I didn’t have any money left for a length of black material to make a decent funeral dress. I had to content myself with a black velvet ribbon tied round my sleeve. But I promise you no professional mourner grieved more profoundly. I murmured the responses with heartfelt concentration, I threw a posy of wild flowers down on Mama’s coffin, and when the ceremony was over, I knelt by the raw earth and wept for hours.

  Eventually the vicar came over to me, bent down, and rested his hand on my shoulder. ‘Try not to grieve so, child. Your mother is at peace now,’ he said gently.

  I could not imagine Mama at peace. I saw her twitching restlessly, racked wit