As Ruth was admitted, Emma’s eyes disgorged two tears. She controlled herself sternly, forcing her face into a puffy obstinate shape.

They sat for a long time on brown plastic seats in a white corridor.

Nurses busily went up and down, sometimes pausing to exchange words and careless laughter. A trolley was wheeled past by two brutish-looking orderlies chewing gum. This was a disconcerting contrast to the chambers of sickness all about, the bodies lying in white bleached wards with pieces of themselves cut away for ever, the hidden grey figures struggling in the last embrace of life.

Rachaela cringed at the hospital. She had never liked them, perhaps taught by her mother’s obsessive fear. People did not go to a hospital to be cured but to be killed or maimed.

She wished she might go home, leaving Emma to watch and wait. But this would be beyond all bounds. It was not possible. She, Rachaela, was the frantic mother. She must stay and try to play her part.

What did she feel? Nothing, nothing.

It was like Ruth, to bring her to a place she hated and loathed, and make her sit here for hours with wet hair.

The Scarabae were never ill.

Was Ruth then not true Scarabae after all?

The sister came in her evening blue.

‘Hallo, Mrs Day? We’re doing all we can, but she’s a very ill little girl I’m afraid.’

She hesitated for Rachaela to scream, weep or swoon. Emma obliged by bursting into tears.

‘There. Please try not to be too upset. We’ve got a good chance.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Emma apologized, as if her tears put them all in jeopardy. ‘I’m being silly.’

‘I expect you’d like a cup of tea. We’ll see what we can do.’

‘Thank you, that would be lovely,’ said Emma. When the sister had gone she said, ‘They’re all so kind. These people are saints. I’m sure it will be all right.’

Later, they let Rachaela, alone, go to look in on her baby.

The room was full of apparatus, empty of doctors. Then one came in, looking harassed.

‘You’re Ruth’s mother? That’s right. Well I’m going to be honest with you. We’re rather concerned. We’re going to try some further measures to get the temperature down and they may have to be a little drastic.’

‘I see,’ said Rachaela.

Probably he took her nothingness for the numbness of shock. She hoped so. She did not want the hostility of these people in their robes of snow.

He told her some more, including complex words she could not follow and which she was sure she was not meant to. In the hall of the magicians she was supposed to remain a novice.

Afterwards she went back to Emma and gave her an expurgated version.