Once I walked into a room and stood with my back against the closed door. And I saw a young woman sitting with her back to me holding in her arms a baby in a long white shawl. Opposite her was a man who hung his head in his hands and combed his fingers through his hair. Between them was a table laid for the man and the woman but there was no food or drink.

And I turned to the mother and baby and I said: "Are you happy?"

And she smiled and wiped the baby's mouth and her breast and I knew her answer and that she had not heard my question.

So I turned to the man and I said: "Why do you look so sad?".

And he hung his head lower and I realised that, although he had not heard my question, I knew his answer.

Then I turned and walked through the garden windows and across the lawn and saw an old lady with fat pink arms picking lavender at a table under the trees in a corner. She looked up as I approached and then went back to her work as I watched in silence.

Then she looked up again and said: "Well, my child, I didn't call you here to watch me!"

And I said: "Did you call me? Was it you that called me?"

And she said: "Does it matter whether or who when there's work to be done?"

So we picked lavender in silence while the bumble-bees drifted among the cut stems on the table. But soon there was no more lavender and I turned to the old lady and I said to her: "Have I seen you before and how did you know to call me? Have I seen you before ?"

And she said softly: "Of course you have, my child. Of course you have."

And I said: "Oh yes, I remember now."

But I didn't.

Soon there was a sound from the windows of the house behind me and it was a familiar sound. It was the strange comforting sound of the piano tuner with his repetitive searching notes and then a tentative chord and finally a curious infinite melody - no beginning, no end.

"It's the piano tuner!" I said. "Who plays...?"

But the old lady was walking away from me between the trees. I called after her: "Does the lady with the baby play the piano?"

She turned back for a moment and said: "There's no lady, no baby. You see, you're dreaming, my child. You've been dreaming again."

And then she was gone and the piano was silent and the smell of the lavender vanished along with the warmth of the sun. The garden became cold and dark and the house was entangled in a rampant mesh of thorns whose barbed branches barred the windows I had walked through.