I sat up and swung my legs to the floor. ‘Okay,’ I said.
Stern looked a little annoyed. ‘This is going to work,’ he said, ‘but it can only work if you cooperate. Just lie—‘
‘It did work,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘The whole thing. A to Z.’ I snapped my fingers. ‘Like that.’
He looked at me piercingly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It was right there, where you said. In the library. When I was eleven. When she said, „Baby is three.” It knocked loose something that had been boiling around in her for three years, and it all came blasting out. I got it, full force; just a kid, no warning, no defences. It had such a—a pain in it, like I never knew could be.’
‘Go on,’ said Stern.
‘That’s really all. I mean that’s not what was in it; it’s what it did to me. What it was, a sort of hunk of her own self. A whole lot of things that happened over about four months, every bit of it. She knew Lone.’
‘You mean a whole series of episodes?’