‘He didn’t say anything. He just put his hand on my forehead and when I woke I felt a great heat there, a burn.’ She placed my hand on her forehead. ‘I walked around that day feeling empty but pleasant, like a vessel for religious feeling.’ She smiled. ‘Afterward I became obsessed with Margaret of Cortona. I decided to enter a convent; become a nun. My father wasn’t too happy about that either. But that’s the trick. Master Itten says it’s not about depriving yourself – of food, of hair, of luxuries. It’s simply about making more space to see.’

I didn’t tell her that my mother, a few years ago, had had an epiphany too. She’d been fasting for Lent when she’d had a vision of a British shell hitting my brother’s trench. For days she kept a vigil, believing that if she ate nothing she would keep him alive. And Peter had survived – but at a different kind of price.

Charlotte picked up the razor, which must have been Jenö’s. All the curls were gone so quickly it was as if they had never really been there. ‘Do you think Walter’s in love with Jenö?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘of course.’

‘Do you think Jenö knows it?’

‘I think he’s pretending it’s not there,’ I said. ‘So that they can be friends.’

I saw her expression modify as she pulled the razor around my ear. ‘What about Irmi and Kaspar?’ I said.

She smiled, concealing something. ‘She’s too serious for him.’

In the mirror I looked like a half-skinned apple. ‘Kaspar’s the most serious man I know!’

‘Ah, that’s what he wants you to think. Really, he’s a buffoon.’

Just then the razor nicked, and I felt a drop of blood on my face, then drop down my neck. ‘Charlotte, can you—’

‘Paul?’

I imagined my chin hitting the sink and my tongue bursting; my mouth filling with blood. I felt a wave of nausea, and I saw a brownish film. I tried to blink it away but it was no good. ‘Can you clean that away?’

Charlotte swabbed at it with tissue. ‘I forgot. I’m sorry, Paul. Here, look,’ she switched on the tap. ‘All gone.’

The dizziness felt worse on an empty stomach and I waited for the fur on my sight to go. Again there was the scraping sound of the razor. As she worked I held onto the sink, trying to concentrate on the cold ceramic. I had always been phobic of blood, ever since I’d seen a friend in the playground pull a nail from his foot and a jet of blood spurt everywhere.

Eventually my vision returned, and I saw myself in the mirror, as bald as Master Itten. I touched her scalp, and then mine. ‘How strange we look,’ I said. ‘Like wizards.’