"Are you mad?" Hélène asked with a smile.

As always, Flora was struck by Hélène's fragility. Her hands were so light she thought they might break, like the hollow bones of a bird. Her eyes were very large and deep, the pale skin stretched tight over the high cheekbones, her lips full and dark red; a breathtakingly beautiful woman. In her company, Flora felt awkward and clumsy.

"I don't know."

It was the truth. There was no way of making heads or tails out of her thoughts. She had told Hélène she would turn William down. Yet, in the pocket of her skirt lay the rose scented acceptance note for him, for delivery on her way home, she told herself with resolute ambivalence.

When Hélène received guests, she did so regally, reclining on a daybed which constituted the centre of her universe. She had fragile nerves and rarely left her home. Before marrying Salim, her father's business partner, she had been an aspiring poet. Writing wasn't good for her emotional state, the doctor had said however, and removed her books and notebooks. This didn't help. After the birth of her baby, her nerves further deteriorated. The doctor prescribed morphine. The mollifying drops were so efficient she no longer felt the need to leave her bed. Books could safely be returned to her, the doctor ruled. By that time she had lost her desire to read or write.

"In fact, I've lost all want," Hélène told Flora. "It makes life easier, I feel more free."

A life free of desire – Flora tried to imagine it. To her, wanting was like breathing: more money, finer dresses, bigger jewellery, wealthier suitors. Without want, she would have been a bulging farmer's wife with a trail of children clinging to her skirts, prematurely aged like a dried fruit, or dead already. Flora didn't say this out loud – such raw ambition was not becoming for a lady. Even Hélène would think it common.

"Oh please, darling," Hélène now said. "Of course you won't refuse him. We're just having a bit of fun, where's the harm?"

The words made Flora feel small and petty. The joke they'd played on Pera society had been fun. At first. It'd started when Hélène asked if Flora was related to family friends in France, the Marquis Le Cordier from Normandy. Of course, she was not. Her name was simply Cordier, and she came from Hainaut in Belgium, the daughter of a farmer. She did not share any details with Hélène, but she did not lie, either. As far as she knew, she had no relations in France.

"You could be related, though, couldn't you? The names are spelled the same," Hélène had pressed her.

"I suppose so. I suppose anything is possible."

"I think you are family," Hélène said in the teasing voice she used, as if nothing was serious or sacred. "I think you are of excellent pedigree. You should be properly introduced in Pera society as such, and we should find you a wealthy husband."

A fit of laughter possessed them, that's how hilarious the prospect had seemed to them, and following this their friendship had deepened. It masked their different conditions, fooling even themselves. Until that moment, Flora had been a smudge on the edge of Pera society, but as a relative of the Marquis Le Cordier, even a poor, distant one with a glove shop, she now came into focus and experienced some kind of social acceptance.

Flora and Hélène soon became welded into a single entity, one internal the other external, each living through the other. While they schemed to get her married into high society, Flora brought Hélène gossip and experiences from the outside world. Reclined on her daybed, Hélène absorbed these as if she'd lived them herself. She analysed and commented and made fun of everyone. Not meanly, Flora thought, but with insight and truth. Reflections Flora could not allow herself to express or even think.

It was thrilling. It made the Pera bourgeoisie look different, less imposing, less intimidating, and it made her feel more serene. Meanwhile, Flora absorbed Hélène's nonchalance and indifference, which changed her attitude towards her customers. She was no longer subservient or dazzled by their wealth and status, she no longer worried about what people said about her, and she made abstraction of the fateful day when the truth about her would be revealed. Or she thought she had.

She fingered William's note in her pocket. The joke didn't feel like harmless fun anymore. They were suddenly worlds apart. What if Hélène could not be trusted? What if she told William about their little joke? We were just having a bit of harmless fun, she might say. You really planned on marrying her? Flora pictured people laughing at her and closed her eyes in terror. Yes, Hélène would be forgiven for the deception, but it would be the end for Flora. Not only Jane would turn her back on her, everyone would. Gold-digger, they'd call her. The kind of slut who gets her hooks into a man and cleans him out. She didn't like their game anymore, she felt trapped inside it, while Hélène stood high-and-dry on the sidelines. What a fool she was for thinking she could ever pull herself out of her origins. Hadn't her lover in Paris asked her to marry him too? Only to abandon her after he'd taken what he wanted. Would she never learn? Again she felt humiliated, wounded, not by him or Hélène, but by her own stupidity.

"The truth will come out," was all she could say.

"Oh for heaven's sake, darling, forget about Jane and the rest," Hélène said and placed her delicate hand on Flora's arm. "You take things much too seriously."

Flora was scared. Of William. Of being unmasked. Of herself. The only place on earth where she had felt secure was behind the counter of her shop and that didn't feel safe anymore. She was on the verge of breaking apart, of overflowing.

"It doesn't matter what people think. When you are Mrs Seagrave, the whole of Pera will revere you," Hélène said. "You won't have to work in the shop again. You will become just as dull as the rest of us. Oh dear, what shall I do then?"

Flora laughed along, but inside she felt even more confused. William was a wealthy businessman, the best match in Pera. It was obvious he would not want a shopkeeper for a wife. The thought had occurred to her before, but not like that. Not in terms of giving up herself. The distaste she had always felt for him re-surged. William was awkward and reserved. In all his social interactions there was cordial contempt in his manner, and in his eyes, and he spoke with a cold headed, dumbfounding logic. There was an intensity in his presence which she found eerie. She had tried, but she did not find him likeable.

"Likeable is not a necessary criterion," Hélène had said when she remarked on it. "We're only fishing for a husband, not a friend."

With a rustle of starched cotton, the nanny brought in the baby, and, almost imperceptibly, Hélène's body tensed. The soft, gurgling sounds of the infant filled the momentary silence. With practised grace, but with an absence of warmth in her embrace, Hélène cradled the child.

Flora waited. Something in her head relaxed, and slowly, the uneasy feeling and the doubts dissipated. Even giving up the shop seemed like an acceptable price for marrying William. Life was clear and easy for Hélène, nothing seemed to touch her, nothing seemed important. Flora was seeing problems where there were none. She had been right to come here. Hélène had cleared the cobweb from her mind; how lucky to have her for a friend.

As the baby cooed and reached for her mother's face, Hélène gently turned her head away, her smile strained. "You hold him, I'm too tired."

He was a fine and healthy baby, but the warm and soft little body made Flora unhappy. To cope with the feeling as she cuddled the child in her arms, she imposed on herself an attitude of false enthusiasm.

"You don't like babies, do you?" Hélène said.

An accusation. Flora felt herself being squeezed into an uncomfortably small place. "Of course I do."

Hélène looked at her carefully. "You know, you never speak about yourself."

Flora's mind wandered to her childhood in Hainaut, the endless fields of wheat and the cramped, dusty farmhouse. "Don't I?"

"You've never told me how you ended up in Constantinople?"

Trying to mask her discomfort, Flora laughed. "By ship, of course."

The nanny took the baby and left the room, the lavender aroma from her neatly pinned hair wafting behind her, along with the faint, powdery scent of the baby's skin.

Hélène smiled pensively, and reclined on the daybed. Her gaze drifted towards the window, her eyes unfocused. Flora noticed a flicker of melancholy in her expression, a fleeting shadow that vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

As if it was nothing, Hélène said, "I don't love him, you know. The pregnancy was repulsive to me. My son. I don't want him. Strange thing is I don't feel sick or strange. I feel nothing at all." She smiled brightly. "The doctor says I'm unnatural."

Flora hesitated, out of nervousness. Hélène's candour hypnotised her – it was freeing and made her want to spill her own heart, to return Hélène's trust in her by sharing her own secrets. But it was dangerous to open closed doors. They weren't playing by the same rules. Hélène could say what she liked, but for a woman in Flora's precarious social position, unveiled secrets could rob her of everything. It was prudent to still keep her past to herself. Her miserable childhood, and her reasons for coming to Constantinople, there was no need for Hélène to know any of it.

An intolerable pain seeped to the surface, and there seemed to be no remedy for it. She perceived a rot which oozed out of the apertures of her skin and she knew what it was. From the black well at the bottom of her soul, gooey, decomposing parts shifted upwards, watery and swelling, spreading decay. Bringing back the timeworn, stinky shame of what she'd had to do to get here. She thought Hélène must be able to smell it on her.

She changed the subject to entertaining gossip, relaying how Ottoman soldiers had searched for softa in Mme Giraud's courtyard. She told the story as the old lady had, replete with hate and fear, but inside, she felt a thrill rise through her body, a vibration, urging her to tell her own version of events, the way she'd lived it. The tension between them relaxed.

"They never found them, although the softa were there, hidden behind two large water barrels," she said.

"The soldiers didn't find them, you said?"

She nodded, feeling her pounding heart. She knew she should stop right there, that she should suppress the urge to confide in her friend. They were not the same, she reminded herself. Hélène could do what she liked, she could not. Speaking of that night would put all her hard work at risk. It would give Hélène the means to destroy her.

"So, how do you know?" Hélène insisted.

Flora was on the point of saying something, abandoned it, then said in a voice barely above a whisper, "I know because I was there."

"Where?"

"In the yard, hidden behind the water barrels."

Hélène's cheeks turned pink, and her staring eyes sparkled. She laughed, and feeling reassured, Flora laughed too.

"You were there?"

"Behind the water barrels, between two softa. The soldier searched the yard and left."

As if a dam had broken inside her, she found herself recounting in brief, tense phrases, the details of that fateful night. Hélène listened intently, her eyes widening with a mix of shock and admiration. She was interested in the two men. What were they like, their smell and features, the sound of their voices? Was Flora afraid?

Without thinking, Flora described Reza. When she started on Hamid, she recounted details even she hadn't realised she'd noticed – that his body was nervous, that his skin was olive coloured with an exciting smell, and that his voice matched the softness of his skin. She went overboard: she talked too much and too loudly, spurred on by excitement. Or by a nurtured anger, a growing eagerness to provoke, to violate, to break all the rules. An anger, she realised, which kept her from sleep, led her astray, made her open her door to strangers. Worst of all, it had been pleasurable to give expression to that anger, and was pleasurable even now as she told her story. She noticed a tingle in her lower abdomen, vibrating warm and fuzzy – the same feeling she had noticed at the end of the night with Hamid, when they'd stood squeezed together in a narrow doorway.

Hélène got up from the daybed. She too was flushed and her voice, which always had a mocking undertone, had changed.

"We must find out what happened to them," she said.

"What?"

"You must go to doctor Droit to find out."

Flora despised herself. Why had she told Hélène? What was she doing? By putting words on her experience and sharing it, the night she had vowed to forget became real. It opened the door to a part of herself which she'd worked so hard to keep closed. Beneath her defiance, there was something vile and dark, something uncontrollable and frightening that could destroy her.

When Flora protested with lame excuses that she would not have time because of the engagement preparations, or because of the heavy workload before the spring balls, Hélène's frivolous tone returned. It would be their secret, an exhilarating project, a harmless sin – enough to sustain them for a long time after Flora had become a married woman. God knows how bored they would be then.

Hélène knew how to draw her in. She could not resist. It was too depressing to imagine the dreariness of her future life as Mrs Seagrave, without linking it to Hélène's fantastic and daring moves. She left promising nothing, although she knew she would do it. It was only natural she'd want to know if Reza had survived; she had, after all, risked her life to save him. As she returned home, she felt a familiar rush of excitement coursing through her veins. The vibrant colours of the market stalls, the exotic scents wafting from street vendors, and the lively chatter of the crowds always reminded her of how fortunate she was. With each step, she felt herself embrace the limitless possibilities that lay ahead.

A cabbie delivered her note to William's home. It's more dignified than delivering it in person, Hélène decided. The note was brief and to the point: I am honoured to accept your proposal. She signed the note "Yours truly" as Hélène had advised her to do.

When William replied with a lunch invitation and a gift for her to wear – a pair of stunning diamond earrings – unhappiness returned, and anger. She stowed them away in a drawer upstairs to hide them from the girls. In fact, she had not yet told them about her engagement. Until now, it had seemed premature.

That night, she roamed the shop, a ghost with dishevelled strands of hair. Outside, the rain teemed down. As she re-organised the shelves behind the counter, she found Hamid's jewel encrusted dagger, which she'd forgotten to return to him. In her hand, it felt like an otherworldly object. Gently, she placed it in a drawer.

It was long past dawn when she woke with a feeling of dread. She waited for it to pass before pulling herself up and out of bed. The air was moist, mist rose from the sea of Marmara, and through it, the morning light seemed to glide away.

__________________________

Author's note

I imagine that Hélène suffers from what, at the time, was known as "female hysteria". It was a common medical diagnosis for women experiencing a wide range of symptoms, including anxiety, irritability, sexual desire, and rebelliousness against traditional gender roles. The term "hysteria" itself comes from the Greek word for uterus, reflecting the belief that the condition originated in the female reproductive organs.

In the embedded image, a patient in the expert hands of her doctors. Hélène could count herself lucky. At the end of the 19th century, many women who deviated from societal norms or exhibited signs of mental distress, were committed to asylums by their husbands, fathers, or other male authority figures. The asylums were overcrowded and unsanitary institutions that provided little in the way of actual treatment.

Some famous women who were psychiatrically labeled and hospitalised are: Zelda Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, Frances Farmer, Sylvia Plath. Were they sane? Or did they suffer postpartum or other depressions? Did they, like Hélène, fail to cope with narrow, social roles? Were they too idle? Or had they been worked too hard? Beaten, raped, abandoned? No one asked.