“Oh, I promise you it’s true,” his father said, sounding gleeful about the prospect of incarcerating his only daughter in a lunatic asylum.

After an amount of time that the boy couldn’t measure, the car turned off the main road and onto a lane that was straight and wide at first, but soon started to narrow and bend. There were thick hedges on both sides. From this point onward, the boy saw no cars apart from the one that contained his unhappy family. The lane straightened out again. Daylight had dawned by now, and the boy could see that there was a large house with shuttered windows coming up on the left, behind a stone wall. The shutters were a sickly shade of green.

“Here we are,” said his father, stopping the car in front of two large stone gateposts. Carved into one of them was the name “Bardolph House.” The boy felt ill. He couldn’t bear the idea of leaving his sister in this place.

His father got out of the car. As he did so, two men appeared from between the gateposts. One was bald and older, the other young and very dark, with a low forehead and wire-rimmed glasses. They were both wearing long white overalls. One was carrying a clipboard. The boy heard a strange noise come from his sister. When he looked at her, he saw that she’d turned pale. She hadn’t believed what her father had told her until she saw these two men, but now she believed it.

The father opened the car’s back door and ordered his daughter to get out. He was carrying a suitcase that he’d retrieved from the trunk. “Come on,” he said. “There’s no point putting it off. It has to be done. Hopefully, if the treatment works, you’ll be able to come home—perhaps in a few weeks if you’re lucky. On average they say it takes about six months for a complete cure.”

“No. Please,” said the boy’s sister. “I’ll never lie again. I swear.”

“You always say that,” said her father, “but you always let me down, don’t you?”

The two men in overalls were standing on either side of the boy’s sister, holding one of her arms each as she struggled and begged to be released. Her father had taken the clipboard from one of them and seemed to be filling in a form that was attached to it. Her mother sat silently in the front passenger seat, saying and doing nothing, though the boy knew, even though he couldn’t see her face, that she was crying.

The two men in white overalls started to drag the boy’s sister toward the house. She continued to howl for a while. Then she went limp and quiet, as if she’d died, and allowed herself to be dragged. Perhaps she fainted. The boy hoped she was still alive. He opened his mouth to say something to his mother—he wasn’t sure what—but found that bile came out, thick and sour, instead of words. Still, his mother did and said nothing. The boy imagined climbing behind the wheel and driving away. It was too late to rescue his sister, but he could rescue his mother.