Really, they couldn’t have been kinder; and every kindness evoked tears, which were unwelcome in hospital.

Physically, she was well again. She could look after herself, spent a great deal of time on the terrace overlooking the garden in which Matron took such pride, ate moderately well and, with the aid of a small pink pill, slept through the night. One day she was taken to a room on the other side of the building, and a brain specialist, with a specialist’s apt double-barrelled name, spent a long time testing all her reflexes, asking questions and fixing a thing called an encephalograph to her head. He reported that he was completely satisfied that no injury had been done to her brain at all. But he did mention ‘a hysterical block’. And that resulted in some sessions with a psychiatrist who started off on the assumption that the past three years held some experience which she wished to forget.

That called up such appalling possibilities that she refuted it with all her might.

‘One cannot forget at will. Everybody has seen or heard or lived through hundreds of things which they would forget most willingly, but they can’t.’

‘These things are not so simple. It is very difficult to explain to the layman. Things such as you are thinking of are the concern of the superficial, conscious mind. It is when the deeper, subconscious mind comes up against something that it cannot accept that the obliterative process begins.’

He asked her many very personal, even embarrassing questions. He invited her to tell him about her sex life.

‘I have none,’ she said simply. He said that was nonsense; everyone did. He said it was impossible for him to help her unless she was willing to help him.

‘But I am doing my best. So far as I know – that is, as far as I remember, the only time . . . Oh, it was very childish. At my first school. There was a little boy named Alan; I thought he was extremely handsome. I think he was, and popular. I was very flattered if he spoke to me and one day he did tell me about his dog. He went on to his prep school and I never saw him again. But I always thought that if I did get married and had a son, I would name him Alan. But nobody ever thought of marrying me, so nothing came of that.’

‘You had a dog at Walwyk?’

‘I shouldn’t think it very likely. You see, I taught in a school. You couldn’t leave a dog alone all day.’

‘You enjoyed your work?’