“But the other thing is cheating,” said Esther.

“It’s not. It’s helping the blind. And me. And Jack Lett.”

“And I’ve only just started to see and hear.”

“That will make it easier. There’s less for you to forget.”

“It’s OK, Jack,” said Mrs Bannister. “She’s going to do it. We start tomorrow.”

“What’s the routine?” asked Jack Lett. “You mean, she’s got to learn not to see and hear again?”

Mrs Bannister nodded. “Yes. And we can help her, too, in lots of ways. With earplugs, maybe. And we might have to work out something for her eyes, unless she can really make them go blank, of her own accord. We might even–”

“What?”

“Some kind of operation. It depends if she can’t do it all on her own account, by pretending.” Mrs Bannister sighed in the darkness, and murmured: “It’s not as if she were losing it all for the first time. It wouldn’t be as bad for her as for ordinary people. And we want it to be completely foolproof.”

“You’re a wonderful woman, Belle … I guess I’ll leave it all to you.”

The next few weeks were the most miserable that Esther Costello had ever known, in a life which had held far more than its due share of inhumanity and pain. Even in the months following her original accident, when she had groped about like a stricken animal, there had been nothing to match her present situation.

Then, there had at least been some sort of hope, even if it were only the irrational, tearful hope of a child. But now, after a quick glimpse of the happy world, she was being pushed back into the darkness again – and this, in circumstances which she knew to be shameful, and which might prove criminally fatal to her. It was no wonder that her small resources, which had flowered briefly during the weeks of convalescence, could often scarcely sustain her in her ordeal.

She was going through with it for many reasons, but chiefly for love – love of Mrs Bannister, who in ten years of close and cherishing care had established an unassailable command over Esther. Formerly, it had been a benevolent authority – a mother–daughter relationship compounded of utter dependence on one side, watchful care on the other. Now it was something different, though it worked just as surely, just as unassailably. Now it was power in operation: the power of one human being to compel another to do something she knew was wrong and evil, because her defences against such compulsion had been razed to the ground long ago.

Esther was doing what she was told, for love of Mrs Bannister, to whom she owed every single thing in her life. She was doing it also for the blind, who would suffer, all the way round the world, unless she continued to work for them. She was doing it for poor Jack Lett, who had sunk so much money in his various agencies and factories, and would be ruined if the Esther Costello Club, and all the other affiliations, had to be disbanded. She was doing it because of the police, whom, in her ignorance, she saw as continuously hunting for her, unless she could conceal the crime she had shared with Charles Bannister. She was doing it for shame – the shame of a shy and completely innocent girl who had to confess to a huge public that she had been raped by a man of fifty-five.