It all started at the death of my husband. My first husband, mind you. I've been married once more since that time. Widowed twice. Ill-fated some would say and I wouldn't argue the sentiment.

His death was not a shock to any. I was married at 26 and he was nigh on 65 years of age. His name was Daniel Green, a lawyer who appeared respectable on the outside. At his passing, when the will was read aloud, I found that all his wealth was left to an illegitimate daughter over in America who was my age. Daniel had never mentioned such a relation to me in the entire four years of our marriage. 

I was informed by his lawyer, a man of many years with a voice like an rusty door hinge, that the outcome would have been different had I completed my wifely duty of giving Daniel a son. I bit my tongue at the accusation. I had given Daniel a son. Two sons. Both dead, born too early, and buried beside their father.

Daniel's loss was not emotional for me. Only economical.

He did leave me one blessing. I retained his name. Green was respectable, even if I was a pauper. More respectable than my maiden name, which I had left behind when I sensed the ruin of it on the horizon. I was safe under the name of Green by the time my mother, Sylvia Chattox, destroyed her standing in good society. She called me a coward when I rejected her. I still believe to this day that I am merely a survivor. I made my own selfish choices as much as she made her own. I carry no guilt in that decision.

But I was without income and almost no family. No profession. I needed to find a way to make an honorable living.

So I went about the business of writing a letter to the own worthy relation left to me. My mother's younger brother was a doctor living in London, Dr. Hastie Lanyon. I begged his assistance in finding employment that would be suitable and so that was how I became the governess to the twins for the family of Nicholas and Matilda Findlay.   

To have fallen from the wife of a barrister to a humble governess was a shocking transition. But as I said, I am a survivor. Uncle Hastie said as much the day that I arrived in London from Bath, shrouded in my widow's black and tired from a long train journey.

It was also the day when I was first met Dr. Henry Jekyll.