‘I think you need to be downstairs at seven,’ he said. ‘Daisy will come and get you.’

The prospect of the night and day ahead might once have been a trial, but since her time in Vienna she felt indifferent to such things. She put some more coals on the fire and pulled a wooden chair up in front of it. When she felt warmer, she went to the window under the eaves, opened it and for a moment looked out at the snow tumbling in the darkness.

She awoke as it was beginning to grow light, dressed and crept downstairs. She crossed the small courtyard and entered a larger one, from which she found her way into the cloister, through a gate in the wall and out into the gardens. In front of her was the lake view promised by the name of the sanatorium.

There was no water visible, only the wide stillness, with a dusting of snow from which the sun was reflected through crystals sparkling in the air. Lena had once seen the river freeze at home, but never had she seen such an expanse of ice; it was a chance of nature, she thought, a snow lake. On the far shore there was a line of fir trees and a few ochre-painted houses, bold against the white hills behind. How long might it take to walk across, she wondered, moving easily, like Jesus on the Sea of Galilee.

A sense of joy filled her, as she slapped her cold hands together. She went down the slope of the gardens, out over a path and between some shivering birches to the lake. The reeds at the edge were a frosted green; she went to snap off a stem in her fingers, but hesitated, as though this world was not hers to touch. She let her eyes move over the horizon. There was smoke coming from a distant chimney, but she could see no living thing and it seemed from the silence that no bird had braved the morning. She put one foot on the solid surface, then placed the other one beside it; she jumped up and down, twice, but it was harder than a road. Pushing her boots through the white dusting, she began to skate away from the edge out towards a floating wooden platform that had tilted at an angle into the ice. When she reached it, she sat on the raised rim and looked back over the path, through the birches, at the facade of the Schloss Seeblick, where the low sun was catching the windowpanes.

She didn’t know if she’d be mopping floors or clearing the mess of mad people’s beds, whether there’d be young women, girls of her age, or if they would all be men telling her what to do. But if Rudolf Plischke came to call, she would be kind to him. There must be reasons for the way he was, she thought, and he had meant no harm; it was even possible that in his head he was as lost as she was, albeit in a way she didn’t understand. She laughed as she remembered Lukas and Emma at school and how they’d made her wonder if other children had feelings, or if it was only her.