July 28th, 1898

My dear Esme,

Harry writes that you are still not yourself. He skirts the truth of it, of course, but he described you as “distant,” “preoccupied” and “tired” in a single paragraph. Most alarming, he reports that you avoid the Scrippy and spend all day in your room.

I was hoping things would be different for you once you were away from Cauldshiels and home with your father, but it’s been three months. Now that the summer is here, I’m hoping your mood may lift by degrees.

Are you eating, Esme? You were so thin when I saw you last. I asked Mrs. Ballard to spoil you with treats and, until Harry informed me you’d barely left the house, it was some comfort to imagine you sitting on your stool in her kitchen while she baked you a cake. In my mind you are younger, wearing a yellow polka-dot apron tied right up across your chest. That’s how I found you once when I visited Oxford. Were you nine, or ten? I can’t recall.

Something was happening at Cauldshiels, wasn’t it, Esme? The thing is, your letters never said. But your letters, now that I think about it, were too perfect. When I read them now, I see they could have been written by anyone; and yet they are in your distinctive hand.

The other day I re-read how you had walked to the Roman fort of Trimontium, written a poem in the Romantic style of Wordsworth and done satisfactorily in a mathematics test. I wondered whether you had enjoyed the hike and been proud of your poem. The absence of words was the clue, but I didn’t see it.

I should have paid more attention to what was missing in your letters, Esme. I should have visited. I would have, if not for Beth’s illness. When that passed, the headmistress advised against it. Too disruptive mid-term, she said. I took her word.

Harry wanted you home much sooner (truth be told, Harry never wanted you to leave). It was me, my dear Esme, who suggested his concerns were unfounded, that boarding school would take a while to get used to for a child accustomed to the local parish school and lunchtimes spent in the Scriptorium. I told him to give it another year, that things might change for the better.

After collecting you at Easter, Harry sent me the most direct letter of his life. You wouldn’t be going back, he said, whatever my opinion on the subject. You remember I travelled to Oxford the next day. When I saw you, I found no quarrel with his decision.

We barely spoke, you and I. I had hoped that time would restore you, but it seems you need more. You are in my heart, dear girl, even if I have been dislodged from yours. I hope it is not permanent.

I have enclosed a news clipping that I thought might be important to you. I do not want to presume but have found it difficult not to. Please forgive my blind eye.

Yours, with deepest love always,

Ditte