In fact, she looked better, ate better, moved better, and was better. But what, Mrs Bannister wondered, was going to be the full scope of that improvement?

What was the actual material like? What was this girl’s true nature? If she had been normal, what sort of person would she have been? Was she dull, was she clever, was she impudent or coarse? What had she been like when her darkness fell? How much had she known, and how much had she deteriorated in the dead, lost years? Her parents had claimed that she could read and write – but that was nearly three years ago. The priest had said that she was ‘lively’ – but she wasn’t lively now. What was this village child’s real quality: was it something that could be worked on, or was it beyond improvement in any case?

Suppose, for example (and here Mrs Bannister’s thoughts strayed uneasily), suppose the doctors could do nothing, by way of a cure: could anything else be done for Esther Costello? Could her mind somehow be reached – could she be taught the deaf-and-dumb language? A handful of other people had succeeded in this, but it had always seemed an outright miracle. How did you initiate such a miracle, not knowing what material you were working on? And how much was she, Mrs Bannister, going to concern herself in the effort?

The many questions nagged her, as she waited for the American Consulate to move; and there was no one to help her to answer any of them. She would sit opposite Esther in the silent room, and stare at her for long minutes at a time: speculating, hoping, wondering about the future. If one half-closed one’s eyes, the girl was comfortingly normal – a pale, long-legged child, in a short blue dress and white socks: a schoolgirl, in fact, on the verge of growing up. (Oh God! thought Mrs Bannister suddenly: how did one explain that? It was bound to happen soon …) But one could not really close one’s eyes to anything about her: she was not normal, she was hopelessly handicapped; she remained a terrible responsibility and, if the doctors failed, a terrible problem.

Once, in urgent need of reassurance, Mrs Bannister experimented. She did so hesitantly, unable to rid herself of the feeling that she was indulging some questionable impulse, that her act was indecorous, that this was what the newspapers meant by ‘interference’ … But the outcome was so heart-warming that she soon forgot her earlier reluctance.

Struck by a sudden doubt, she had wanted to find out if Esther still remembered simple words, if such a thing as a door or a chair was still known as a door or a chair, within the appropriate corner of her head. The girl might have forgotten everything, she might have twisted everything back to front. Inside that derelict brain, the word for ‘door’ might now be ‘floor’ or ‘whore’ … Mrs Bannister wanted to know, once more, what the material was like.