At the age of eleven, Esther takes up residence with her father, and finally manages to communicate her intelligence to him with Tom's help (specialists had emphatically cautioned her father and able-bodied carers not to see intelligence that wasn't there). She is subsequently sent off to Netherton – an adapted school for highly gifted disabled students. Having squandered her first term, the death of Peter Rowne from pneumonia, and her recently reconnected Grandmother's firm words, inspire a reformation in her, and she does exceptionally well. There she ponders the life questions every teenager does – love, marriage, sex, friendships, jobs, future living, but with the added fear and uncertainty of her disability. She also learns about the terrible conditions disabled people have had to endure, both in the past and in her lifetime. Through all of this she grows up with the myth of the Skallagrigg, and the secret stories told among the disabled community through non-verbal language. She eventually realises that these stories are real, told by a real person and describing a real place. Piecing them together with the help of her friends and family, she eventually discovers Arthur, the true identity of the Skallagrigg, the characters in the story, and the fact that Arthur has an estranged son and grandson, reuniting Arthur with his beloved Skallagrigg.