Originally published: London : Bloomsbury, 2012.

While making his first tours of the hospital at which he has just begun working, maverick psychiatrist Zachary Busner notes that many of the patients exhibit a strange physical tic: rapid, precise movements that they repeat over and over. One of the patients is Audrey Death, an elderly woman born in the slums of West London in 1890. Audrey's memories of a bygone Edwardian London, her former lovers, her involvement with early feminist and socilist movements, and her working at an umbrella manufacturer, alternate with Busner's attempts to treat her condition and bring light to her clouded world. But what is the cause of Audrey's strange condition - and could have something to do with her two brothers, Albert, who pursued a successful career in the civil service, and Stanley, who died in the trenches of World War I?