He had come to rely on Mrs Bannister in a great number of ways; this, apparently, might be yet another of them.

She herself was in turmoil: pity, rage, and fear held her enchained. She could not believe that even Charles Bannister would have done so fearful a thing. She was wildly jealous, although she had not cast a glance in his direction for months and knew that he must have been totally drunk to have thus entered the lists of love. But above all she was possessed with fear – fear that the story would leak out, fear that everything would now be lost, and that all her hard work and self-dedication, all the riches that the future had promised them, would come to naught. Mrs Bannister had never been a predominantly greedy woman, but she was certainly, by now, an ambitious one; success had hardened and enlarged her will, and (mindful of the past) she was seeking also an impregnable financial security.

Having gone far towards attaining it, having in the process been accorded a mantle midway between celebrity and saint, having worn it with assurance for years on end, she could not give up her position without a frenzied struggle.

Such were her thoughts, such her aching desire, as she considered what to do next. When she had said to Jack Lett that the Australian tour must be ‘postponed’, she had not really considered how the trip could ever be undertaken at all. Esther was in the doctor’s hands – a doctor so obscurely skilled, so dubious, so marginal, that there had been no need to swear him to secrecy; she had recovered all her faculties; she now possessed, according to their standards, no assets at all. But Mrs Bannister had said ‘postponed’ instead of ‘cancelled’, because she could not bring herself to surrender. The fat years, the years of homage and acclaim, had corrupted her too deeply. Somehow she must salvage the triumphant past, and build on it again.

The tour was accordingly put off ‘for at least three months’: they took over a house in the country, about fifty miles from London, and settled down in absolute obscurity. Esther, they gave out, was exhausted, by a schedule which had proved altogether too much for her strength. She must have complete rest. There could be no visitors, no interviews, no public contact at all.

Having thus taken care of the immediate problem, answered sufficient questions, and secured her breathing space, Mrs Bannister gave her mind to the future.

The small Buckinghamshire house was very quiet: the country noises, the distant traffic from the bypass road a mile away, barely reached within its walls. In a room at the top of the wide creaking stairway, Esther lay, absorbing all the riches of the world again.

Her body was healing, and she had much to enchant her eye and ear. It was astonishing how many things she had forgotten, in the ten years of darkness.

There were some sounds so delicate and alluring – like a bee at the honeysuckle that framed the window, or a cat mewing in the yard below – that she felt like laughing with joy at their emergence. There were some sounds so loud and violent – like an aircraft passing low over the house, or a man shouting at some animal – that she was ready to weep at their ugliness. There were some things so strange to see again – like food, or a mirror – that they frightened her: there were things so welcome – like Mrs Bannister, and the bars of sunlight moving across the wall – that joyful laughter came near to her heart once more.