At about four o’clock, a social worker from the hospital and a woman from the Department of Children and Family Services arrived, and it was explained that everybody would be spoken to separately.

And as I stood up, my sister leaned in, close to my ear, and said seven words.

“Just tell them you found it after.”

I did not answer her.

I walked out of the bay and down a corridor and into a small room with a table in it.

I did not report that sentence for three days.

That is a fact about me that I have had to look at for a long time and I am going to put it down honestly, because it is the only part of the first week where I behaved like a sister rather than like a stenographer.

I sat in that room for fifty minutes and answered every question and I read out my note and I did not mention what she had said in my ear, and when I drove home at eight o’clock that night I told my husband about it and then I did not do anything about it for three days.