“It’s a fine thing you’re trying to do, Mrs Bannister,” said the young-old man at the American Consulate, fingering a paperknife, smiling at her in the particularly open way that people of authority use when they are preparing to turn down their thumbs. “But it gives us certain problems that aren’t going to be easy to solve.”

He restated some of them, while Mrs Bannister turned her mind inwards. This was the Cadillac over again, she thought: there’s just a piece of paper missing – only this time it affects a blind girl instead of a chunk of metal. But as the Cadillac had come right, so must Esther Costello: the plan, starting as a vague impulse of generosity in Cloncraig, had begun to grow and take definite shape, aided by half a dozen things – the compliments of people who learned the facts, the way the whole project made her ‘feel good’, the brilliant smile she had been able to bring to Esther’s face already. She could not change her mind, and retrace her steps now; anything that stood in the way must be melted down or climbed over. And here, in this shabby, smoky Liverpool office, she must start melting and climbing.

She turned back to the man behind the desk.

“I know it’s difficult,” she said agreeably. “But I do want to do it, if it can possibly be fixed … Can’t I give an overall guarantee that I’ll always be responsible for her?”

“It could be arranged,” answered the Vice-Consul. “But do you really want to do that?”

“How do you mean?”

“I’ll be frank with you, Mrs Bannister,” he said, as if thus far he had only been playing the fool with truth. “The fact is, I can see this girl becoming a nuisance to you. Suppose the doctors can do nothing for her? Will you keep her on in the States indefinitely?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” said Mrs Bannister frankly. “But I’m sure they will be able to do something for her.”

“And if not? Would you take her back to Ireland again?” The Vice-Consul’s eyes met hers suddenly. “Wouldn’t it be kinder not to start this thing – just to leave her where she was?”

Where she was … Mrs Bannister had a sudden vision of the shed at the end of the garden, the filthy girl on the filthy bed, the parents muttering their bedraggled chorus, the worn rope that led to the privy. She could almost smell that neglected inmate, that animal den … That was ‘where she was’, and no one who had seen it, unless they were as unfeeling as clods of earth, could ever condemn her to it again.

“I want to get her out of it, and I don’t want her ever to go back,” she said, with sudden energy. “It was the most terrible place you ever saw … If there’s a guarantee to be signed, I’ll sign it. Whatever you want, I’ll put my name to it.”