I don’t have any memory of my childhood. Any memory at all. Except this. I’m alone in a little bed, lying the wrong way up, my head knocking against the bottom of the bed, deep beneath the sheets, and I’m choking, because I can’t find the way out, and I cry for help, I’m choking, I’m going to die, I cry for help. Downstairs, in the big drawing room, there’s a reception, noises of conversation, the tinkling of glasses, nobody can hear me. But in the corridor, the maid passes. She hears a faint sound, like the whimpering of a kitten, comes in, sees the hump in the bed, and throws back the covers, like the curtain in a theater. I am saved.