‘I feared for her life, I really did, that she would one day run out of all hope, and take drastic action. I had to stop her doing such a thing. I truly believed that was my only goal, the reason I’d been put on this earth.’

‘To protect her?’

‘Yes. Absolutely. To look after Adeline.’

‘What was the outcome of all this?’

‘There was one final time, when the whole family gathered together. And that’s when it happened.’

She paused. The silence stretched out.

‘Camilla? Do you want to stop?’

A shake of the head. Once more, she looked over to the mirror. And she said, ‘He might as well come in now. This should be heard clearly.’

Hobbes took his cue. He walked through into the interview room, and he stood near Latimer, close to the wall, not saying anything.

Camilla began, ‘It was 1954, a day in October. I remember it all so vividly, I think I always will. It was the final night of the latest run of The Moon Awakes. It hadn’t gone well, and Mary Estelle’s young replacement had received rather bad notices. But, as always, Leonard liked the family to be together on such occasions. He returned home late from the theatre, and was rather boisterous. He’d been to a party. We were all waiting up for him, myself, Rosamund, Nicholas and Mary Estelle. We’d all been drinking as well.’

Fairfax asked, ‘Was Adeline present?’

‘Not initially. But I went upstairs to visit her, to see if I could persuade her to join the party. Adeline was standing in the dark, by her bedroom window. The curtains were open. I joined her there, and we both looked down at the lawn, and the flowerbeds and the elm tree, the garden shed. Mummy liked to keep the rear portion of the garden wild, in contrast to the neatness of the beds, and the lawn. And I saw something weird. I looked down and I saw … I saw …’

Her voice trailed off, and her eyes took on a strange look, the kind that a ghostly vision might bring to a non-believer.

It was quiet in the room. Camilla gave a shiver – it passed through her whole body.

Fairfax whispered, ‘What was it? What did you see?’

Her eyes were still unfocused as she answered, ‘It was a woman. A woman, standing on the lawn, looking up at the window.’

Hobbes remembered his own experience in the garden, after he’d been affected by the fungi, the spores in the air: the woman he’d seen at the upstairs window. So that was Adeline’s bedroom! He took a step forward and uttered his first words since he’d come back into the room: ‘Who was it?’

Camilla glanced at him, and then away. And she answered clearly: ‘It was Adeline.’

Now she smiled, or tried to: a grim line to the mouth. ‘Yes, I’d been drinking, I know that. I admit that. Far too much. We all had. But I know what I saw.’