‘It’s from your pupils, Miss Mayfield. One of them must have written the message. It says “To dear Miss Mayfield, the nicest teacher we ever had.” Those years weren’t lost, were they? I’m quite sure that when that knock on the head has healed, it’ll all come back.’

You never realized until you lost part of it, as few people ever did, how much the past was entwined with the present. The whole of life was, indeed, a building up of a structure, solid, unchangeable, at the summit of which you stood. One thing led to another; cause led to result; the structure mounted with you. To have three years cut out of it – lost, mislaid, forgotten, call it what you would – gave you a fearful sense of insecurity and made all that you could remember seem unreal. Even Rose, though so clearly remembered, was part of the unreality. A friendship of such long standing, based upon mutual respect and affection, could not have been ended by their parting; so presumably from this place called Walwyk she had written to Rose, and Rose had replied to her. But what had they said to one another? Could she now write to Rose in such a fashion that she would not worry her?

She made several attempts, brooding with halted pen for a long time and producing sentences like ‘I have had a very slight accident, only a fall in the school, but it has left me rather weak and shaky and disinclined to write a long letter. This is just to let you know and assure you that I think of you often.’ Because she knew she was writing cautiously and evasively, the words, when she read them through, sounded false, and she was afraid that Rose would leap to the conclusion that her accident was more serious than she implied. So she wrote an alternative, an imaginative description of her accident, embellished with light-hearted details. And that didn’t have the right ring either.

One day, when the Matron made her visit, Miss Mayfield said:

‘I should like some of my clothes. For when I am allowed up. And I wonder if whoever sends the clothes could bring in any letters that belong to me – old letters. I think they might prod my memory and help me to fill in the background.’