One August morning while on holiday in Sardinia, my six-year-old daughter awoke with an expression of rapture on her face. “Guess who I saw in my dream?” she asked. Once I’d been through Father Christmas and our dead dog, I gave up. “Mary!” she shouted, and floated downstairs as one transported. “Guess what I dreamed!” she kept shouting. Soon she was at the head of a long table, with her Sardinian grandparents, an aunt, and neighbours from up the lane crowding around her. Looking every inch a little Bernadette Soubirous, with her dark Sardinian eyes, my daughter recounted how Mary had slept in the bed next to hers, and how she had watched her arise in the night and go downstairs – and how, as Mary reached the last step, the burglar alarm had