When at last she resolved to put it to the test, the two of them were sitting in their suite before dinner: the girl relaxed in her usual armchair, with Mrs Bannister opposite her. Here, in the evening dusk, it was warm and peaceful: the sound of traffic, and the newsboys shouting the Liverpool Echo, reached them faintly from seven floors below.

While, earlier, she had been revolving the problem in her mind, something she had once read, or a photograph she had seen, had occurred to Mrs Bannister. It had concerned lip-reading – but lip-reading by touch and by the vibration of sound. She must have read it or seen it a very long time ago, but now it had returned to her, pricking her imagination. If the two of them experimented on the same lines, it would mean that Esther would put her hand over Mrs Bannister’s mouth, to try to feel what she was saying.

Mrs Bannister had thought a lot about it, and now she was going to try it.

There was no harm in the idea, she told herself, quelling – not for the first time – some faint distaste or reluctance within her. It was simply a hand touching a face, the face of another woman. Why should Esther mind that? It was not forcing her, it was not – anything out of the ordinary.

Mrs Bannister glanced round the room. They wanted a word, she thought. A simple word, a word the girl was sure to have known in the past. They wanted one word only, and then she could put Esther on trial with it.

Between them was the electric fire, glowing softly in the twilight of the room. On an impulse, Mrs Bannister crossed to Esther, and, putting a hand under her arm, raised her, as she always did when she wished to indicate that it was time to move or to walk. Esther rose obediently, and stood waiting. Mrs Bannister led her the two steps to the electric fire, took Esther’s hands in her own, and held them out to the warmth.

She watched the small hands uncurling as they felt the glow of the fire bar. Then she raised Esther’s right hand, and put it over her own mouth. She felt, with secret pleasure, the young fingers gripping her trustfully about the lips and chin. She spoke into the hand, enunciating with slow care: “Fire.” And again: “Fire.”

She repeated the whole manoeuvre, holding Esther’s hand to the warmth, and then clasping it to her own mouth, and saying “Fire”, slowly and with special emphasis. At the third time, Esther’s face suddenly brightened, and she nodded. Mrs Bannister repeated: “Fire”, and felt the small fingers gripping and curling round her mouth, as if the girl feared to lose this linking word, which had suddenly reached her through lips she had never seen and never touched before: as if she clung desperately to the promise of speech. Tears came to Mrs Bannister’s eyes as she felt the fingers continuing to grope and to welcome … She repeated, yet once again: “Fire”, for sheer pleasure in this warm communion. The hand on her mouth, like a baby’s clutch, was a sensual blessing.