“We’re going now,” I said. “Thank you for talking to us. Please say goodbye to Miss Emily for us.”

I could see her studying me in the fading light. Then she said:

“Kathy H. I remember you. Yes, I remember.” She fell silent, but went on looking at me.

“I think I know what you’re thinking about,” I said, in the end. “I think I can guess.”

“Very well.” Her voice was dreamy and her gaze had slightly lost focus. “Very well. You are a mind-reader. Tell me.”

“There was a time you saw me once, one afternoon, in the dormitories. There was no one else around, and I was playing this tape, this music. I was sort of dancing with my eyes closed and you saw me.”

“That’s very good. A mind-reader. You should be on the stage. I only recognised you just now. But yes, I remember that occasion. I still think about it from time to time.”

“That’s funny. So do I.”

“I see.”

We could have ended the conversation there. We could have said goodbye and left. But she stepped closer to us, looking into my face all the time.

“You were much younger then,” she said. “But yes, it’s you.”

“You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to,” I said. “But it’s always puzzled me. May I ask you?”

“You read my mind. But I cannot read yours.”

“Well, you were… upset that day. You were watching me, and when I realised, and I opened my eyes, you were watching me and I think you were crying. In fact, I know you were. You were watching me and crying. Why was that?”

Madame’s expression didn’t change and she kept staring into my face. “I was weeping,” she said eventually, very quietly, as though afraid the neighbours were listening, “because when I came in, I heard your music. I thought some foolish student had left the music on. But when I came into your dormitory, I saw you, by yourself, a little girl, dancing. As you say, eyes closed, far away, a look of yearning. You were dancing so very sympathetically. And the music, the song. There was something in the words. It was full of sadness.”

“The song,” I said, “it was called ‘Never Let Me Go.’ ” Then I sang a couple of lines quietly under my breath for her. “Never let me go. Oh, baby, baby. Never let me go…”

She nodded as though in agreement. “Yes, it was that song. I’ve heard it once or twice since then. On the radio, on the television. And it’s taken me back to that little girl, dancing by herself.”

“You say you’re not a mind-reader,” I said. “But maybe you were that day. Maybe that’s why you started to cry when you saw me. Because whatever the song was really about, in my head, when I was dancing, I had my own version. You see, I imagined it was about this woman who’d been told she couldn’t have babies. But then she’d had one, and she was so pleased, and she was holding it ever so tightly to her breast, really afraid something might separate them, and she’s going baby, baby, never let me go. That’s not what the song’s about at all, but that’s what I had in my head that time. Maybe you read my mind, and that’s why you found it so sad. I didn’t think it was so sad at the time, but now, when I think back, it does feel a bit sad.”

I’d spoken to Madame, but I could sense Tommy shifting next to me, and was aware of the texture of his clothes, of everything about him. Then Madame said:

“That’s most interesting. But I was no more a mind-reader then than today. I was weeping for an altogether different reason. When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go. That is what I saw. It wasn’t really you, what you were doing, I know that. But I saw you and it broke my heart. And I’ve never forgotten.”

Then she came forward until she was only a step or two from us. “Your stories this evening, they touched me too.” She looked now to Tommy, then back at me. “Poor creatures. I wish I could help you. But now you’re by yourselves.”

She reached out her hand, all the while staring into my face, and placed it on my cheek. I could feel a trembling go all through her body, but she kept her hand where it was, and I could see again tears appearing in her eyes.

“You poor creatures,” she repeated, almost in a whisper. Then she turned and went back into her house.

We hardly discussed our meeting with Miss Emily and Madame on the journey back. Or if we did, we talked only about the less important things, like how much we thought they’d aged, or the stuff in their house.

I kept us on the most obscure back roads I knew, where only our headlights disturbed the darkness. We’d occasionally encounter other headlights, and then I’d get the feeling they belonged to other carers, driving home alone, or maybe like me, with a donor beside them. I realised, of course, that other people used these roads; but that night, it seemed to me these dark byways of the country existed just for the likes of us, while the big glittering motorways with their huge signs and super cafés were for everyone else. I don’t know if Tommy was thinking something similar. Maybe he was, because at one point, he remarked:

“Kath, you really know some weird roads.”

He did a little laugh as he said this, but then he seemed to fall deep into thought. Then as we were going down a particularly dark lane in the back of nowhere, he said suddenly:

“I think Miss Lucy was right. Not Miss Emily.”

I can’t remember if I said anything to that. If I did, it certainly wasn’t anything very profound. But that was the moment I first noticed it, something in his voice, or maybe his manner, that set off distant alarm bells. I remember taking my eyes off the twisting road to glance at him, but he was just sitting there quietly, gazing straight ahead into the night.

A few minutes later, he said suddenly: “Kath, can we stop? I’m sorry, I need to get out a minute.”

Thinking he was feeling sick again, I pulled up almost immediately, hard against a hedge. The spot was completely unlit, and even with the car lights on, I was nervous another vehicle might come round the curve and run into us. That’s why, when Tommy got out and disappeared into the blackness, I didn’t go with him. Also, there’d been something purposeful about the way he’d got out that suggested even if he was feeling ill, he’d prefer to cope with it on his own. Anyway, that’s why I was still in the car, wondering whether to move it a little further up the hill, when I heard the first scream.

At first I didn’t even think it was him, but some maniac who’d been lurking in the bushes. I was already out of the car when the second and third screams came, and by then I knew it was Tommy, though that hardly lessened my urgency. In fact, for a moment, I was probably close to panic, not having a clue where he was. I couldn’t really see anything, and when I tried to go towards the screams, I was stopped by an impenetrable thicket. Then I found an opening, and stepping through a ditch, came up to a fence. I managed to climb over it and I landed in soft mud.

I could now see my surroundings much better. I was in a field that sloped down steeply not far in front of me, and I could see the lights of some village way below in the valley. The wind here was really powerful, and a gust pulled at me so hard, I had to reach for the fence post. The moon wasn’t quite full, but it was bright enough, and I could make out in the mid-distance, near where the field began to fall away, Tommy’s figure, raging, shouting, flinging his fists and kicking out.