“What is it?” I said. “What’s wrong?”

“Sit down,” said Richard. “Over here, beside me.” He patted the sofa.

“This is going to be a shock,” said Winifred. “I’m sorry it had to happen at such a delicate time.”

She did the talking. Richard held my hand and looked at the floor. Every now and then he would shake his head, as if he found her story either unbelievable or all too true.

Here is the essence of what she said:

Laura had finally snapped. Snapped, she said, as if Laura was a bean. “We ought to have got help sooner for the poor girl, but we did think she was settling down,” she said. However, today at the hospital where she’d been doing her charity visiting, she had gone out of control. Luckily there was a doctor present, and another one—a specialist—had been summoned. The upshot of it was that Laura had been declared a danger to herself and to others, and unfortunately Richard had been forced to commit her to the care of an institution.

“What are you telling me? What did she do?”

Winifred had on her pitying look. “She threatened to harm herself. She also said some things that were—well, she’s clearly suffering from delusions.”

“What did she say?”

“I’m not sure I should tell you.”

“Laura is my sister,” I said. “I’m entitled to know.”

“She accused Richard of trying to kill you.”

“In those words?”

“It was clear what she meant,” said Winifred.

“No, please tell me exactly.”

“She called him a lying, treacherous slave-trader, and a degenerate Mammon-worshipping monster.”

“I know she has extreme views at times, and she does tend to express herself in a direct manner. But you can’t put someone in the loony bin just for saying something like that.”

“There was more,” said Winifred darkly.

Richard, by way of soothing me, said that it wasn’t a standard institution—not a Victorian norm. It was a private clinic, a very good one, one of the best. The Bella Vista Clinic. They would take excellent care of her there.

“What is the view?” I said.

“Pardon?”

“Bella Vista. It means beautiful view. So what is the view? What will Laura see when she looks out the window?”

“I hope this isn’t your idea of a joke,” said Winifred.

“No. It’s very important. Is it a lawn, a garden, a fountain, or what? Or some sort of squalid alleyway?”

Neither of them could tell me. Richard said he was sure it would be natural surroundings of one kind or another. Bella Vista, he said, was outside the city. There were landscaped grounds.

“Have you been there?”

“I know you’re upset, darling,” he said. “Maybe you should have a nap.”

“I just had a nap. Please tell me.”

“No, I haven’t been there. Of course I haven’t.”

“Then how do you know?”

“Now really, Iris,” said Winifred. “What does it matter?”

“I want to see her.” I had a hard time believing that Laura had suddenly fallen to pieces, but then I was so used to Laura’s quirks that I no longer found them strange. It would have been easy for me to have overlooked the slippage—the telltale signs of mental frailty, whatever they might have been.

According to Winifred, the doctors had advised us that seeing Laura was out of the question for the time being. They’d been most emphatic about it. She was too deranged, not only that, she was violent. Also there was my own condition to be considered.

I started to cry. Richard handed me his handkerchief. It was lightly starched, and smelled of cologne.

“There’s something else you should know,” said Winifred. “This is most distressing.”

“Perhaps we should leave that item till later,” said Richard in a subdued voice.

“It’s very painful,” said Winifred, with false reluctance. So of course I insisted on knowing right then and there.

“The poor girl claims she’s pregnant,” said Winifred. “Just like you.”

I stopped crying. “Well? Is she?”

“Of course not,” said Winifred. “How could she be?”

“Who is the father?” I couldn’t quite picture Laura making up such a thing, out of whole cloth. I mean, who does she imagine it is?

“She refuses to say,” said Richard.

“Of course she was hysterical,” said Winifred, “so it was all jumbled up. She appeared to believe that the baby you’re going to have is actually hers, in some way she was unable to explain. Of course she was raving.”

Richard shook his head. “Very sad,” he murmured, in the hushed and solemn tone of an undertaker: muffled, like a thick maroon carpet.

“The specialist—the mental specialist—said that Laura must be insanely jealous of you,” said Winifred. “Jealous of everything about you—she wants to be living your life, she wants to be you, and this is the form it’s taken. He said you ought to be kept out of harm’s way.” She took a tiny sip of her drink. “Haven’t you had your own suspicions?”

You can see what a clever woman she was.

Aimee was born in early April. In those days they used ether, and so I was not conscious during the birth. I breathed in and blacked out, and woke up to find myself weaker and flatter. The baby was not there. It was in the nursery, with the rest of them. It was a girl.

“There’s nothing wrong with it, is there?” I said. I was very anxious about this.

“Ten fingers, ten toes,” said the nurse briskly, “and no more of anything else than there ought to be.”

The baby was brought in later in the afternoon, wrapped in a pink blanket. I’d already named her, in my head. Aimee meant one who was loved, and I certainly hoped she would be loved, by someone. I had doubts about my own capacity to love her, or to love her as much as she’d need. I was spread too thin as it was: I did not think there would be enough of me left over.

Aimee looked like any newborn baby—she had that squashed face, as if she’d hit a wall at high speed. The hair on her head was long and dark. She squinted up at me through her almost-shut eyes, a distrustful squint. What a beating we take when we get born, I thought; what a bad surprise it must be, that first, harsh encounter with the outside air. I did feel sorry for the little creature; I vowed to do the best for her that I could.

While we were examining each other, Winifred and Richard arrived. The nurse at first mistook them for my parents. “No, this is the proud papa,” said Winifred, and they all had a laugh. The two of them were toting flowers, and an elaborate layette, all fancy crocheting and white satin bows.

“Adorable!” said Winifred. “But my goodness, we were expecting a blonde. She’s awfully dark. Look at that hair!”

“I’m sorry,” I said to Richard. “I know you wanted a boy.”

“Next time, darling,” said Richard. He did not seem at all perturbed.

“That’s only the birth hair,” said the nurse to Winifred. “A lot of them have that, sometimes it’s all down their back. It falls out and the real hair grows in. You can thank your stars she doesn’t have teeth or a tail, the way some of them do.”

“Grandfather Benjamin was dark,” I said, “before his hair turned white, and Grandmother Adelia as well, and Father, of course, though I don’t know about his two brothers. The blonde side of the family was my mother’s.” I said this in my usual conversational tone, and was relieved to see that Richard was paying no attention.

Was I grateful that Laura wasn’t there? That she was shut up somewhere far away, where I couldn’t reach her? Also where she couldn’t reach me; where she couldn’t stand beside my bed like the uninvited fairy at the christening, and say, What are you talking about?

She would have known, of course. She would have known right away.