Local girls would collect in her room to talk feverishly about men. When they’d gone, Catherine would look into the mirror. Her high unshapely skull, blue-veined, looked back at her, and for years that image of herself was fixed in her retina and, despite her humiliation, she grew fond of its dark-eyed purity for the absence of hair fixed all expression in the eyes and mouth and nose. Baldness stood for mourning. Her white skull and her mother’s terrible breathing were expressions of grief. In time, at twilight, when there were few about, she’d walk the beach hugging Sara’s elbow, her head wrapped in towels in the manner of a turban. They’d link each other. Someplace underwater the stones shimmered.

Catherine began wearing black scarves, a habit that would stay with her long after her hair had grown. Her head in a black scarf, she read every minute she could. Sara and Catherine had always spent a lot of time in their rooms. In this they had inherited much of the solitary nature of their father. But that summer a change came about.

Sara began doing things on her own, stopping out late, not telling much of what she did. Before this they had always faced the outside world together. Now Catherine pored over books alone. And it was not just a matter of losing herself – this she could do, but when she’d emerge she would feel transformed. A new dimension had been added to her consciousness. The characters existed more strongly in her mind than real people did. According to their emotions and their standards she measured her life and her worthiness as a woman. The afterglow would make her anxious – anxious enough to read the same book again. Finishing a book was something she never wanted to do. And it was not just being steeped in the character or plot – it was a fright to her that a feeble story could contain a truth that assembled far from the meaning of the actual words.