“What do you mean?” Jean asked with a slight shiver, remembering the religious icons in the hall. She couldn’t hear the word without thinking of Margaret.

“I had a visitation one night.”

“You mean some kind of vision?”

“No, it wasn’t a vision. That’s what Elsie calls it, but she’s wrong. It was definitely corporeal, because he touched me.”

Jean’s heart began to beat faster.

“Do you remember when this was? Was it during the time that Gretchen was a patient?”

“Yes, it was that summer. It was late July. I know that because my cousin had been to Lourdes and brought me back a vial of holy water for my birthday, which is on the fifteenth.”

“So, tell me about this vision—I mean visitation.”

“Every night one of the nuns would come in to say evening prayers with me—usually Sister Maria Goretti.”

“Just you—or were the other girls involved?”

“Oh no. Just me. They weren’t believers.”

“Anyway, sorry. I mustn’t keep interrupting.”

There was a tightness in her chest of held breath and trepidation.

“Well, one evening I told Sister about the holy water. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to drink it, dab it on like disinfectant or what to do with it. But I’d heard all these wonderful stories from my cousin about the miracles at Lourdes. So Sister took the bottle out of my cupboard where all my personal things were kept and I asked if she could bless it.

“She said she wasn’t allowed to give blessings because she didn’t have the authority, but it was already holy and she would use it to mark a cross on my forehead. And then she prayed over me to St. Bernadette for a sign that I would get well. Then she put my rosary on my pillow where I could see it and I went to sleep, hoping that in the morning I would be healed.

“At some point in the night I woke up and the rosary had slipped off my pillow, and when I turned my head there was an angel standing beside me.”

“What did it look like?”

“It was dark and I didn’t have my glasses on, so I couldn’t see clearly, apart from the outline of his flowing hair.”

“Did he have wings?”

“I couldn’t see.”

“So what made you think it was an angel?”

“Because I felt this tremendous sense of peace come over me as if the Lord had sent him to tell me that everything would be all right, just as we had prayed.”

“And then what happened?”

“He picked up the rosary, which was on the floor, and laid it on my pillow, and his fingers brushed my cheek. So I knew it was real and not a vision.”

At last, Jean thought. It came back to her now, that uneasy half-formed idea that had refused to come into focus at the time of her mother’s delirium. There had been a man on the ward, she had said, interfering with her. But it hadn’t happened; it was a hallucination. Surely a reverse delusion was equally possible where drugs were involved?