Miss Mayfield unhooked her skirt and stepped out of it. She dropped it over Ethel’s head and hooked it around her waist. She took her spare cardigan and pushed one of the flaccid white arms into a sleeve and then the other; it was exactly like dressing a dummy in a shop window. She buttoned the cardigan, and then put over it the plastic Singing in the Rain coat, thinking that if Ethel’s frigid form ever engendered any warmth, it would at least be kept in. At intervals as she worked, she talked to Ethel, bidding her wake up, begging her to speak, to look. She even shook her once, very gently. But Ethel was beyond the reach of ordinary sound or touch.

Outside, the howling, the inarticulate expression of rage and frustration went on until Miss Thorby’s voice cut through it. Miss Mayfield did not catch the actual word, but it must have been a call for silence. What now, Miss Mayfield wondered, and again she moved between Ethel and the door.

Nothing happened; the silence stretched out achingly, so that presently one’s own breathing, one’s own thudding heartbeat, seemed to affront it. They couldn’t have gone home. . . .

Then in the quietude there was a sound, so small that at no other time, in no other place, could she have heard it – the soft susurration of Ethel’s hair brushing the plastic. Miss Mayfield swung round and was in time to see the last movement of the hair, swaying as Ethel tilted her head into a listening attitude.

Never in all her life had Miss Mayfield seen such complete concentration. Ethel was listening with the whole of herself, down to her very heels. Once, slowly and comprehendingly, she nodded her head; once she smiled. Miss Mayfield, who could hear nothing, again had that feeling of being opposed to something which she could not measure. And again she threw herself against it with the only weapon she had.

‘You’re not to listen, Ethel! Whatever it is, it’s wrong. You’re to listen to me, Ethel, not to them! Not to them!’

Ethel gave no sign of hearing the actual human voice so close to her ear; she did not move her eyes or betray by look or gesture that Miss Mayfield’s urgent words were even an interruption of her listening. When she moved, it was with the precision of a perfect machine, and so suddenly that Miss Mayfield, who was looking at her, was nevertheless taken completely by surprise. She snatched up the torch which Miss Mayfield had switched on and placed on the floor once the need for concealment had passed; and as her hand closed on it, Miss Mayfield thought, They need darkness. She had only just time to duck her head as Ethel brought the torch down with all the force she could command.