She was doing it because she was facing, alone and without allies, the most formidable barrage of persuasion she had ever known in her life.

But whatever the reason, whatever drove her to compliance, it was certain that she had much to endure; for the things they now did to Esther Costello would not have disgraced a team of Hollywood make-up men setting to work on some definitive version of the Bride of Frankenstein.

As a preliminary, the doctor who had done the original repair work upon Esther, came to live in the house.

He was a small, off-white man whose nervous over-the-shoulder manner was doubtless well grounded in the past. He was about fifty, with plump hands and a suppliant smile; his papers – at least, the papers he carried with him – showed that he had practised as a dental surgeon in Cyprus, a gynaecological consultant in Tangier, and a neurologist in Cannes. He gave his name as Dr Worthington. He seemed to be Egyptian.

The hour produced the man, and this without doubt was a vile hour.

Dr Worthington’s role was executive: he was to bend his talents towards the physical rehandicapping of Esther, supplementing Mrs Bannister, whose sphere was re-education in sensory anaesthesia … It was of course essential that, whenever she was under the public eye, Esther should never betray herself: the loud noise, the sudden light, the wish to respond to some special kindness or acclaim – these must never be allowed to make any impression on her. Much could be done by training, by schooling Esther – as is done with police horses – to ignore any outside manifestation; but to aid in thus dulling her senses, Dr Worthington, who was of an inventive turn of mind, weighed in with a number of experiments.

It was not possible to make Esther completely deaf again, but by means of earplugs she could be rendered abnormally hard of hearing, so that she became disinclined to listen to people talking. She could not be made blind; but an ingenious form of contact lens, clear when viewed from the outside, opaque when looked through from within, ensured that she saw almost nothing of the outside world, while to the spectator her eyes appeared to be still unclouded. Complete dumbness, to avoid the danger of her answering questions when caught off her guard, was not possible to achieve without the sort of operation which Mrs Bannister still shrank from; but Dr Worthington was able to perfect a form of injection which, by constricting the inner muscles of her throat, made speech painful for a number of hours afterwards.

These things were simply aids to training – the training which Mrs Bannister instilled into her, day after day, and which gradually she came to accept, with a hopeless resignation that was perhaps the most effective frame of mind for what they planned to do with her.

“I think she can cope with it now,” said Mrs Bannister. “It’s taken all of three months, but it’s been worth it.”