‘No! Yes! I mean I … I didn’t …’ I muttered, glancing off sideways.

‘You do find me attractive, Miss Hahn!’ Mr Huff exclaimed, astonished. ‘Just look at that! A double hair-tuck! You do find me irresistible, Miss Hahn!’

Mr Huff gazed at me, intently, bemusedly, his mouth stricken by a perfectly ghastly smile.

‘You’re quite determined to make this as difficult for me as you possibly can!’ I smiled back, equally tortured (equally ghastly). ‘And that’s precisely why I’m standing here, Mr Huff. It’s just what I expected. And it’s exactly what I want – better still, deserve.’

Silence.

Mr Huff drew a deep breath. He straightened his glasses on his nose. He knitted his hands together and then slotted them, neatly, between his knees. He closed his eyes.

Then, finally, one word. Just one.

How?

‘I wasn’t really … not really Orla’s nurse as such,’ I started off, haltingly (although instantly connecting – in my mind – to all the material I’d been rehearsing, secretly, privately, for so many interminable days now), ‘or even her nanny. I was more of a … I was actually just her jailer, her guard. Because she kept on … she wouldn’t – couldn’t – stop praying, Mr Huff. For sinners—’

‘I know all this,’ Mr Huff interrupted.

‘And her health was already so fragile,’ I continued, undaunted. ‘The Thalidomide had affected her upper torso – her arms – but it had also affected her intestines. She would bleed, internally, when she grew too exhausted. She would haemorrhage …’

‘That’s apparently not terribly unusual,’ Mr Huff concurred, ‘in people with her condition.’

‘Nothing her parents tried would make her stop.’ I shrugged. ‘She really was obsessed. It was a compulsion, a glorious compulsion. She would mutter the Jesus Prayer – repeatedly, constantly – whenever she possibly could: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”’ I quickly reeled it off. ‘Or she would whisper the Rosary. Or she had this little saying, “Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell and lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of Thy mercy.”’

‘A popular Catholic incantation,’ Mr Huff sniffed, apparently unimpressed. ‘I thought this was meant to be a confession, not a conversion, Miss Hahn!’

‘Can’t it be a bit of both?’ I asked, stung.

He slowly shook his head.

‘Are you frightened of believing?’ I wondered.

‘I’m frightened of everything,’ he muttered, ‘aside from myself.’

‘I’m frightened of nothing but myself.’ I shrugged.

‘So what do you believe in, Miss Hahn?’ he demanded, eyes slitting.

‘Believed,’ I corrected him, ‘I believed in Orla.’

Mr Huff grimaced.

‘And I … I literally had to watch her like a hawk,’ I continued. ‘If her eyes started to de-focus or if her lips began to shape the words, then I had to stop her. At all costs. That was my job. To police her. To distract her – if simply for her own … her own good.’