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though parted on the side sticks up at the back. She has the sort of body that could never be feminine – the shoulders are too hefty, the ankles, the hands – but it makes me feel safer than anything else I know. Her face could never be pretty either, her jaw is too strong, her nose too long, the lips thin and jutting, but it is the kindest face I have ever seen, apart from my mother’s.
    ‘So how d’it go?’ she says in her broad country accent.
    ‘He wants to hypnotize me,’ I say. ‘He thinks I’ve got dissociative amnesia.’
    She raises her eyebrows. ‘That’s a new one.’
    I smile. Then I stop smiling and hesitate before I speak again. ‘He thinks I can be rehabilitated.’
    Margaret looks frightened, and then I think she seems to brighten, and then I think she looks angry. ‘Well,’ she says finally, and her voice is firm but guarded. ‘That’s good news.’
    For a moment neither of us speaks. Then she says in a deeper voice: ‘What are you doing with that bible?’
    I feel my cheeks blush. There is very little that can be hidden from Margaret. ‘Seeing if I could read it,’ I say.
    She pulls it out. ‘Want me to put this back?’
    I nod.
    She takes it from me with a long look and I hear her replace the lid of the box, stand on the chair and stow it behind the books. As she gets down I hear her tights slither against one another.
    We are silent for a moment, then she says: ‘You can go into the lounge if you want, they’ve all gone to church so it’s pretty quiet.’
    ‘Okay,’ I say.
    ‘Are you going to have dinner?’
    ‘Do I have to?’
    ‘A little bit.’
    ‘Any suggestions?’
    ‘The beef stroganoff’s all right but steer clear of the apricot pudding and custard; Carol’s cooking and she’s not particular about lumps.’
    I smile. ‘Then just the beef, please.’
    ‘She won’t be pleased, you know; she always knows when someone’s skipped her dessert.’
    At the door she stops and looks back at me. ‘No more reading. Promise?’
    I nod.
    She looks at me.
    ‘I promise, Margaret,’ I say.

The Road through the Pines
    I am alone, the room is still. I feel great currents move above me. The world thickens and slows. I lie and watch the sky in the high window darken. Sleep comes and I am grateful.
    I wake to earth beneath my cheek, the smell of salt and of rain. There is sand in the earth. Birds are sitting in the black boughs above me. I have been here before. I remember.
    The birds are singing now and the sound scatters amongst the bushes. A sun is rising, winking over the sea. I can tell by the colour of the sky that the day will be hot. I get up and begin walking.
    The sand dunes give on to a road that winds through the pine trees. I do not know where I am going, I do not know where I have come from.
    I hear nothing but my footsteps and the waves on the shore. There is a pain in my chest that makes me stop and when I go on I feel very tired. I cannot tell whether this is how I normally walk. My feet make a scraping sound and will not obey me. They dangle from my legs, slowing me down. My clothes are clammy and cling to my body. My hands smell like iron, like the hole in the millwheel at the farm, where the rust ran and stained the granite in a brown line. The sun rose a little while ago. It spun itself out into skeins of light and the woods were still.
    Sometimes a car or a truck passes and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes someone in the car or the truck stares back at me. I see their faces get smaller and smaller. I suppose I must be getting smaller too. Just now something came scudding over, racing towards me too quickly for me to dodge. A shadow moves beside me and I hear moaning. Now I want to wake up.
    A car with letters on it pulls up in front of me and a man and woman get out. The woman comes towards me. She says: ‘Are you Madeline Adamson?’
    She has a badge on her chest but I cannot read it.
    She says more loudly: ‘Are you Madeline Adamson?’ I frown, then I