Then she felt something touching her chin and she realised it was a man’s whiskers, and the tickling feeling was horrible and she tried to raise a hand to push the man away, but found that she could not raise it. She thought that perhaps she had been turned into some farm animal, penned into a crate and that the man was about to eat her.

Then she heard a voice and recognised it from somewhere, and the voice said, ‘Is she awake, doctor? Is she living and breathing?’

The face disappeared. Emmeline was able to turn her head a fraction and tried to find words in her mind for what she could see. On a table not far from her, there was a collection of … what were they called? Shiny things, sharp things which looked as if they could wound …

The friendly, familiar voice said: ‘It’s Mr Hartley, Miss Adeane. Mr Foulkes and I thought it best to bring you here, to the doctor. You were taken with a bad turn on our premises. How are you feeling?’

She was able to nod her head, but not speak any words. She could see Mr Hartley’s kind face and this was then joined by the lined visage of Mr Foulkes, who said, ‘you gave us a bitter fright, dear lady. But you are safe at last, with a medical man.’

Now, she lay in a hospital bed. The ceiling above the bed appeared very far away and strangely clothed with dark, moving shadows. She stared at these and tried to give them form, but their form eluded her.

Down the length of the ward, echoes travelled. They were the echoes of footfalls and voices, but Emmeline’s mind was unable to say whether they were in past or present time. And these confusions – the formless shadows moving without ceasing, the noises which came and went in a peculiar surging tide – led her to believe that some catastrophe had overtaken her. Its origins remained a mystery. The last thing she could remember was climbing into a Hansom Cab, holding something in her arms.

Some time passed, during which Emmeline fell into a light sleep and when she woke, she saw a figure in white standing beside her bed. The figure remained very still, looking down at Emmeline, who, seeing the white gown, knew that she should be comforted by this person in some way, but she was not comforted. She searched the features, thinking to recognise there something familiar, something tender, but she was looking at a dark brow, at close-together eyes and understood that the stranger would not help her.

She went away and Emmeline resumed her contemplation of the formless shadows playing across the high ceiling. She knew that she was searching for a name and that when she found it, she would have to try to say it aloud, for in this name resided her only hope of understanding what had happened to her.

She searched all night, or at least through what she believed to be night, and when the dawn appeared to break somewhere in the high room, she found the lost one-syllable sound that had been buried somewhere inside her, held down by her sick heart, and she summoned all her strength and began calling out, ‘Jane! Jane!’