She dreamt about Joan. They were children again in the grounds of Inveraray, playing on their bicycles, flicking gravel with their toes, and running for the steps where the sun warmed the stone and they could wait for their father to return. Joan pushed and Enid fell. As her face hit the ground she heard the voices of her family overlaying each other in greeting above her – her mother, her brother Ivar, her father, Joan – but Enid couldn’t move to join them. Her body was stuck, pinned, glued, weighted to the ground, the cold gravel beneath her cheek. They were stepping over her and closing the doors.

She woke pinned against the wall, Fagus leaning heavily against her. She eased her body out, climbing over him like a spider, and slipped along the passage to the bathroom. By the time she came back Joan was there, sitting in the chair Enid had pulled up to the bed. “You go and have breakfast.”

“I’m fine.” Enid didn’t know where to sit. She was going to sit there.

“You don’t look fine.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Glendower is on his way. Douglas sent a message. We thought he’d better check him first thing.” Joan stayed put, so Enid gently moved Fagus’ feet and sat on the end of his bed.

An hour later Glendower came tramping up to the nursery and unpacked his things. “How are we this morning?” he said jovially, but no one else was jovial except Douglas, who tried to smile a little. Glendower shut the curtains, dropping the room into darkness, and shone a torch in Fagus’ eyes. Enid watched how the pupils stayed as dark planets despite the arrow-point of light. In that moment, as the torch shone and she held her breath, leant and looked, the mountains of times it had happened before became foothills. Dr Glendower switched off the torch.

Douglas ran his fingers over his moustache and shifted in his flannel suit. Enid picked at the blood ingrained in the crevices of her fingernails. Fagus lay quietly, eyes open, not moving. Joan remained seated in the armchair, her hands folded in her lap.

Douglas leant his weight on the bedstead, as if to push it through the wall and said, “Well? How is he?”

Dr Glendower went over to the window and opened the curtains. “He’s not responding how I’d like him to.”

Douglas persisted, he straightened up, he ran his hands along the dip and rise of the white metal, gripping and letting go. “Still in shock, is he?” He tried to laugh but it came out wrong, like a cough.

“His sight,” said Dr Glendower, “isn’t responding as I’d like it to.”

His sight. That was the moment she’d got up and left the room. That was the moment Fagus stopped being the great white hope of anything.