A nightmare, she said, when she was finally calmer and able to speak. A nightmare, Mom, she said. What was the nightmare about, honey, I said, what did you dream? I don’t remember, she said, I don’t remember.

Is it possible that she dreamed of the man in the garden room and didn’t want to tell us, to tell us how afraid she was? I have thought of that, over the years. Was she protecting us, her parents, because she knew it was so important, the man in the garden room was so important, and she had to be strong? I don’t know. And what does it matter, anymore?

But for many nights we were woken by Helena’s cries, all three of us, and we hurried to her room, and stood around her bed, I hugging and holding her, as we calmed her. And she always said: I don’t remember, I don’t remember the dream.

And each time, as Howard and I tried later to get back to sleep in our own bed, I would say to Howard, it’s the situation with Joseph, of course it is. And how many times did I beg you to have this thing ended, have Joseph moved? Howard lay silent in the bed beside me.

Helena had trouble after those nights getting up for school, and Emily was told that Helena was having nightmares and waking up at night. So Emily fussed over her in the mornings and made special breakfasts: crumpets and butter; chocolate milk. And Helena would then head off to school, while I worried, and worried.

And Stephen started calling his sister a crybaby, this would start in the afternoons at the pool, and I would have to intervene, I’d be interrupted in my reading on the deck-chair. I’d have to scold Stephen and comfort Helena, there, there, he’s horrible . . . until, finally, he’d stop.

And then Howard said, perhaps Sidney should be called. Sidney’s not a psychiatrist, I said, and you know I don’t trust or like Sidney.

We didn’t call Sidney.

I wonder how Howard got through those days. I imagined him in his office on Rissik Street: the piles of paper on his desk the work; the hush. Perhaps work helped him, perhaps it always did.

And then, as suddenly as Helena’s nightmares had begun, they ended. One night we were not woken, and then the next, and the next after that. Helena slept soundly, as she always had before.

I had told my mother about the nightmares on the phone, but I just said, it’s a phase, I suppose children go through phases. My mother said, what’s wrong, has something happened. She called every day. I pictured her holding the black telephone receiver, the wood floor of her house, her cacti. And asking: Has she seen a doctor, Jacqueline?

My mother suggested she and my father visit. A visit was due, she said. I told her it was out of the question, we were painting the spare room, definitely painting it now. Perhaps my mother could hear a note of panic in my voice that was new. Perhaps she was just too tired to argue with me. She said, alright, they wouldn’t come. But weren’t we sorry not to get this season’s peaches, they were particularly delicious, and what about the children, wouldn’t they miss the visit? I said we would manage, manage it all.