‘Daisy told me. And I can hear it in their voices.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They sound confident. As if they know they’re admired. They speak quite softly, but they know what they’re trying to get across. Miss Martha can be brisk, but she’s mostly doing that for fun. It’s an act.’

‘Is that all? Sounding confident?’

‘You can also tell from the way men talk to them. You know the man who comes each week to check on the pool and all the pipes in the hydro? If he’s asking Daisy for something he takes no trouble. But when he speaks to Miss Martha, he speeds up and he says funny things to impress her.’

Lena smiled. ‘I see. And what do you think they actually look like?’

‘Like their mother. And don’t forget I knew every muscle in her body.’

‘All right. So do you think I’m pretty, Mary? What does my voice tell you about me?’

‘It says you’re poor. But you have ambitions.’

‘You sound like a fortune teller! Ambitions for what?’

Mary licked her lips. ‘To be happy.’

‘But am I good-looking? Do men talk differently to me?’

‘There’s one man here, a visitor. His voice changes when he talks to you.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t come into the dining room or anything. I don’t know who he is or why he’s here.’

‘There’s a lawyer called Herr Plischke, who’s just left, and a journalist called Herr Heideck, who’s older. How old is this man?’

‘I couldn’t say. Maybe forty. Shall I touch you? Then I can say if you’re pretty.’

‘Go on.’

Mary ran her hands over Lena’s face, then through her hair and over her shoulders and down her arms.

‘Now give me your hands. You’ve done a lot of work with these. Shut your eyes, I’m just going to touch your face once more. There. Finished.’

‘Well?’

‘Your hair’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it?’

‘I do my best. And my face?’

‘It’ll have to do, won’t it?’

‘You’re teasing me.’

‘What colour is your hair?’

‘Lots of different colours. Gold and brown and strawberry and—’

‘All right. And your eyes?’

‘Brown. Like a pale hazelnut. So someone told me. Of course, that doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?’

‘I can imagine. They’re set deep, which is nice – and your skin’s smooth, almost as smooth as Kitty’s. Perhaps your nose is a little bit wide.’

‘So, what do you think? Pretty or not?’

‘Why don’t you tell me what I look like first?’

Lena looked at the old woman’s face with its chalky skin and staring white eyes as she sat with her head back in the sun.

‘I bet you were a beauty.’

Mary laughed. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?’

2

Anton spent the morning in the archive, where he found diaries and notes from a journey to Africa undertaken by Thomas as the medical officer to a cartographical expedition. They had come close to death, it seemed. There were also several drafts of a lecture on the origins of human consciousness and how the evolutionary change that enabled it (Anton thought about the sprat story as he read the notes) had simultaneously caused a structural weakness to enter humanity, with the result that one in a hundred people was the victim of severe delusions. Thomas had twice used the word ‘schizophrenia’ and twice crossed it out, the second time with the note ‘badly formed, misleading term (E. Bleuler, who should know better!) for these chronic delusions’.