There was an arrogance in our complicity. We had no external reference but each other, no guide to direct us, no check on our imaginings and delusions. We were pitiless with the failings of others. Metamorphosed in the mill of your descriptive genius, the weaknesses and foibles of those around us became props to shore up our own faltering self-images.

You were the one with words. You were the one who knew how to take an event and describe it so that its essence was revealed. I do not have your talents. If you were here you would know how to tell this tale. You would find a way of penetrating to the truth and enclosing what you found in words of such poetry that one’s heart would sing, even as it wept.

Easter. We walk through the park as usual, stopping to gaze at the crocuses that erupt like lava from the winter-brown crust of the flower borders. On the path by the pond Mrs. Redgrave comes toward us in her bath chair, looking, you say, like something from the museum that has not been successfully preserved. As we enter the hall Miss Mills nods at us from her rostrum, her crucifix gleaming against the slate gray of her dress. The rest of the girls assemble and Miss Mills appeals for our attention.

“Who can tell me what day it is?” There is a timorousness in her voice, a plea to be listened to and liked, which you find infuriating. You mutter something under your breath. Julia Martin steps forward.

“Please, Miss Mills, it’s Easter Friday.”

Miss Mills beams and looks up at the ceiling, as if she is communicating with a higher power.

“Exactly. The day our dear Lord died on the cross. Good Friday.”

“Good?” I hear you snort with derision. You draw a question mark in the dust with your toe.

“Who is that talking?” When she realizes it is you, Miss Mills takes on the air of a beleaguered captain who knows from past experience that this will be a difficult skirmish. “What is it, Virginia?”

Her lips are set in a line of firm resolution. Something in her expression fans your sense of the ridiculous, and you stuff your cuff in your mouth to stifle your laugh. In a moment I am seized too, shoulders twitching as I try to conceal my mirth. We stand together, heads bowed, allies against the preposterousness of the world.

We were trained to be ladies. How was it you put it once? We learned to venerate the angel of virtue, whose selflessness was such that she had no requirements of her own. She was paraded constantly before us, our goal and unrelenting goad. She shamed us when we failed to imitate her, stood in the way of any ambitions we might have. Little wonder, then, that you murdered her, stabbed the point of your pen in her perfect, impossible breast.