Someone had hung washing across Lyra’s window.
She stopped in the doorway with her hand still raised to knock.
A man’s shirt occupied the place where she used to watch the orchard road. Beneath it stood a basin, two folded quilts and a stool she had never owned. Her old writing table had been pushed against the wall. A saucepan rested on a square of tile beside it.
A woman rose from the bed.
“Lady Lyra.”
The girl at the window turned with a pin between her teeth.
For a moment, Lyra could see the room as it should have been. The blue coverlet. The ink stain hidden beneath a mat. Her practice sword on the hook beside the wardrobe.
The hook now held a shopping bag.
