The problem is also the nature of memory, the passage of time and language itself, the language of the many versions and the meaning that slides away between them. “I must have done, I must have known, I must have thought…,” says Mary, reporting on her state of mind as she killed Martin Brown. I must have … The eleven-year-old child speaks through the mouth of a woman of forty. It is hard not to think that Mary is a giant translation problem. If we could solve it, would we hear a language that means anything to us?

Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self-…, loc. 498