And on the ninth — and this is in nobody’s notes, it is in mine, because I kept a diary of the visits the way you are advised to — she asked me whether we had any other children.
I said we had a son called Silas and that he had died.
And she said: “Okay.”
Nothing else. She went back to the cards.
I wrote it down that night as asked about S, took it well.
A four-year-old had been holding a face in her head for two and a half years, and she had picked us out of three books, and on the ninth visit she worked up to asking a direct question — and got the man’s name, and confirmation that he was dead, and nothing else at all.
And then she waited another seven visits and two days in this house before she said one word about it, standing in front of a photograph, because she had finally seen him where she could point at him.
