But at the same time I could understand quite well why she’d been angry with me. Mary was much braver than me. She dared to believe in something – really believe in it, like it was as solid and certain as a rock or a tree trunk – even if she couldn’t prove it for certain. And, what’s more, she didn’t just say she believed in it, like a lot of people do, but had given up pretty much everything else for that one thing that she believed in, which is something hardly anybody does at all. It was as if she was playing a game of toss-up, like the one I once watched guards and traders playing at Veeklehouse, and had bet everything she had on one single throw of the dice, so certain was she that she knew which side would come up on top. I’ve not met anyone else who did that, except maybe Starlight, who bet everything on a man she hardly knew from far side of the Pool.

So, even though I was angry with her for the way she’d treated me, I still looked up to Mary. I still loved her in a way. And the truth was that, however angry I might be with her, I was much angrier with myself for what had happened.

I mean, Tom’s fat dick, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t warned me! ‘Our Mother’s voice is quiet quiet,’ those were her words. ‘She doesn’t shout at us. She speaks so softly you might think it was just your own thoughts.’ You couldn’t get much clearer than that. And yet, not once but twice, the first time and the final time I went into the Circle, a firm clear voice had spoken to me in my mind and told me exactly what I needed to do, and I’d just ignored it.

Again and again and again, in the eight years since I’d last seen her, I’d gone over that in my mind. How could I have failed to listen to the voice inside my head that told me to go over to Mary and tell her about the things I’d been holding back from her? Could there really have been any doubt at all that telling her was the right thing to do?