“This is the first time he’s been calmed by words instead of chloroform, Mrs. Owen. It’s a start.”

I dreamed I was in France. Gareth wore a turban, and Bertie could speak. Angus was rocking me, saying, “Sekura, sekura.” I looked down and my feet were bloody stumps.

When I arrived the next morning Lizzie was already in the Scriptorium, wiping the pigeon-holes with a damp cloth. I could smell the vinegar.

“Sleep in?” she said.

“A bad night.”

She nodded. “They’ll be taking the pigeon-holes this morning. If you box up whatever’s in your desk, they can take that too.”

My desk. Not a thing had been packed away. There were even some slips and a page of copy on top. It was like a room in one of those museum houses. I assembled my box and began filling it.

My copy of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary went in first, then Da’s books—what he called his “Scrippy library.” I picked up a worn volume of The Thousand and One Nights and turned to the story of Ala-ed-Din. The past came towards me, and I closed the book. I put it in the box with the others.

I cleared the top of my desk and opened the lid. There was a novel I never finished reading. A slip fell from its pages—a dull word, a duplicate, probably. I put it back in the book and put the book in the box. Pencils and a pen. Notepaper. Hart’s Rules with Mr. Dankworth’s notes still attached. They all went in.

Then the shoebox full of slips. My slips. The slips Gareth had procured from Lizzie or sneaked into the Scriptorium to borrow. I put them in the box too. Then I folded the flaps down, securing one beneath the other.

“I think we might be done, Lizzie,” I said.

“Almost.” She dipped her cloth in the bucket and squeezed out the excess water. Then she got on her knees to wipe the last row of pigeon-holes. “Now we’re done,” she said, sitting back on her haunches. I helped her to stand.

An older man and a boy arrived while Lizzie emptied her bucket of water under the ash.

“They’re all ready to go,” I said.

The older man pointed to the pigeon-holes closest to the door, and the boy bent to lift one end. They had the same stocky build, the same blond hair. I hoped the war would end before the boy came of age. They took the shelves to a small lorry parked in the driveway.

Lizzie came back with a dustpan and brush.

“Just when you think there’s nothing more to do.” She brushed up decades of accumulated dust and dirt that had built up behind the pigeon-holes.

Shelf by shelf, the man and his boy removed all evidence the slips had ever been there.