When the bird finally fluttered in her grasp, and then flew away, Esther always spelled out the word ‘free’.

She and Mrs Bannister talked all the time. Esther was now sixteen, and growing lovely: her slight body had filled out gracefully, and her face, warmed and animated, had a young glow upon it that would one day be distracting … She was becoming a woman, and she could not fail to know it: indeed, she was immensely curious about all this growing process, and what her face and body looked like, and her questions to Mrs Bannister darted this way and that as the answers fed her secret thoughts.

More than once Mrs Bannister noticed Esther touching her flanks and then her breasts, with inquisitive, almost wondering fingers. Once she did this, to Mrs Bannister’s embarrassment, when they were sitting out of doors on one of the Common benches; but luckily there had been no one near to see it, no man to stare or whistle. It came as a shock to Mrs Bannister to realize, as she did vividly at that moment, that Esther might one day, in marriage, come to know and welcome another person’s hands upon her.

Sex … Esther skirted round the question, but the question was there all the time. She knew about babies – babies were just young animals, and human procreation was for her a simple variation on farmyard practice. That much had clearly been in her mind already, when she was struck. What she did not know, and what she was avid to learn, was her own place in this scheme, her own chance of womanhood … The sentences would come pattering out like the questions of a shy, persistent child.

“How old am I now?”

“Am I pretty?”

“Am I good to see?”

“What is this dress like?”

“How big is my waist?”

“Tell me about my legs.”

And sometimes: “Are there men near me?”

“Do men look at me?”

“What do they look at most?”

“Is my skirt long enough?”

“Do they look here?”

She was, perhaps, more frank than she would have been if the words had actually been spoken. (So far, all their conversation was in sign language: Mrs Bannister, and the Institute, were experimenting with the idea of teaching Esther to ‘hear’ what was said, by placing Esther’s hand on her own mouth when she talked, as they had first tried, long ago, in Liverpool; but progress was still slow.) Mrs Bannister dealt with the questions as best she could, trying to minimize the spring … Sometimes she thought: I suppose I was like this myself, when I was a teenager, only I didn’t care to advertise the fact. But Esther still lived in a simpler, childlike world where a question – any question – was a thing to be asked straight out.

Mrs Bannister hoped – without much conviction – that the answers she gave were enough to allay curiosity. If Esther, at the age of sixteen, were to start exploring in any direction, it would be altogether too much to deal with.