The Crimson petal and the white

I, I.

Sugar prises open another couple of diaries. She reads a few lines here and there, but is daunted by the enormity of the task ahead.

Twenty diaries, hundreds of pages, all cluttered with Agnes's wearyingly tiny script.

And instead of revelations that could be of some use to her should she bump into Mrs Rackham on the stairs today, there are only complaints about inferior china, dreary weather, and dust on the banisters. Only a few weeks ago, Sugar would have been very excited if she could have retrieved, from a pillar-box or a garbage-heap, just one letter written by Agnes Rackham; she would have pored over each line, wringing out maximum insight.

Now, Agnes's entire life lies here before her, in a mound of grubby diaries, and she doesn't know where to start.

Eventually, she decides there's only one way to do it: begin at the beginning. Breaking each of the diaries open, she sorts them according to date until she has the earliest one in her hands.

The inaugural page of this first diary, the smallest and most delicate of all the volumes, consists of several false starts, written in a neat if somewhat slanted hand. The date, 21 April, 1861, is rendered with especial care.

Dear Diary,

I do hope we shall be good friends. Lucy keeps a Diary and she says it is a very fine and amusing thing to do. Lucy is my best friend, she lives in the house next-door to where I Agnes's second attempt is directly underneath the first, equally neat, showing her determination not to be discouraged by one failure. 28 April, 1861 Dear Diary, I do hope we shall be good friends. I think you will find I am as Faithful a little girl as ever lived. In May I shall be Ten Years Old.

When I was younger I was very happy, tho' we lived in a smaller house than we do now. Then my dear Papa was taken from us, and Mama said I ort not to be without a Father, and The two entries following this are not quite as neat, as if Agnes wrote them in a rush-hoping, perhaps, that sheer momentum might carry them over the obstacles that derailed the others.

Dear Diary,

How do you do? My name is Agnes

Pigott, or should I say that was my name, but now Dear Diary,