‘There was no way I was leaving Polly without having a good look at where she was going to be sleeping. So I said, “I’ll just come in and help Polly settle,” and basically let myself inside.

‘Brad says I only feel this in hindsight, but something about the place was making me uneasy. I was trying to chat to Snow and make my way further into the house, and she kept standing half in front of me, like I’d gone far enough or something.

‘I did my best to just ignore the feeling that I wasn’t welcome. I said, “How many children will you have here this week? Will there be children for Polly to play with?”’

The way Mrs Wallace remembers it, Snow hesitated for a second and said, ‘There will be three other children here this weekend.’

Mrs Wallace said, ‘I’d love to meet them. Polly’s probably dying to meet them too, aren’t you, Polly?’

Snow said, ‘I think they’re asleep.’

‘Now, you can call me pushy,’ Mrs Wallace told me, ‘but I said, “Oh, I’d love to have a little peek! Children are so cute when they’re sleeping.”

‘So, finally Snow set off down a long hallway, toward a heavy door, and I followed her. She pushed the door open and stood back to let me see inside, and I hope it didn’t show, but I was shocked. Just absolutely shocked.’

I asked Mrs Wallace to describe precisely what she saw.

‘It wasn’t dirty or filthy or anything like that,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It was in fact exactly the opposite. It was an enormous white space – two or more rooms, made into one – and it was essentially empty except for three hospital beds with heavy rubber wheels – the ones with the steel sides that come up?

‘Above each bed was a canvas sling on a hook and chain, like you see in nursing homes, to lift patients in and out of bed. Across the ceiling, there were thick plastic light tubes flashing red, white and blue. And in the beds there were children.’

‘How many were there?’ I asked, and Mrs Wallace said, ‘Three.’

‘How old would you say they were?’ I asked.

‘They were between twelve and fifteen years of age,’ Mrs Wallace said. ‘And each of them was lying in their own bed, under the flashing lights. They were naked except for towels around their waists – towels that somebody had folded and pinned into place, so they’d look like nappies. And right at each child’s waist there was a tube – a thick plastic tube, a bit like the tubes that were carrying coloured lights across the ceiling – and those tubes were stuck in the children’s stomachs at one end, and hooked up to a plastic bottle of pink liquid at the other end.

‘And above each child was a sign, “nil by mouth”.

‘Now, I don’t like to stare but I was staring. The children were . . . well, they were absolutely enormous for one thing, just huge, and they looked to me more like seals than children, with their big, vacant eyes and their huge, pale stomachs exposed. They were staring blindly at the ceiling and their mouths were open and their tongues were lolling out. Their hair seemed to be wet, or slicked with sweat, and their feet had curled up on themselves.