Esther was nearly fifteen now, and, having recovered from her time in hospital, was growing very pretty; the slight body had filled out, and it was obvious that she would be, within a measurable number of years, a young woman of singular attraction. It had been all right about her ‘growing-up’, thought Mrs Bannister, letting her memory stray: the girl had taken the whole thing for granted, and had dealt with it competently. Mrs Bannister had forgotten that Esther had lived, as a child, so close to nature, surrounded by farmyard practices and peasant frankness. That worry was over – or rather (she smiled to herself) there was only one other thing to worry about, in that connection … It was quite a thought that one day she might have to explain sex to this pretty child. Or would that be unnecessary also?

But, apart from the vague future, what was to be done now? The newspapers had been pretty good about the whole thing – they might have played it up for the wild goose chase it was – but that headline ‘No Hope for Esther Costello’ still rankled all the time, reminding her that she had promised one thing and performed another. It was not her own fault, but that made no difference: if she had assumed responsibility through her good-hearted ignorance, she had assumed it none the less. Over this, her friends were not helping her at all: they only saw the thing as a problem in arrangement, when really it was a moral issue, like the war, like keeping your word to a child. Paul wanted the girl out of the way, because she threatened to become a nuisance in his life; the others, realistic in another way, wanted her to rid herself of the responsibility, for her own comfort.

She herself was determined, somehow, to justify what she had done; so that no one could sneer or laugh at her, and the newspapers would see that it was really something after all, and Esther would live again.

While they had been talking – and for some time before – she had been thinking of another idea: perhaps the best idea of all, though it was something entirely outside her experience, and would in fact involve a completely new life for her. It had sprung from the conviction that, having brought Esther so far – in time, in space, in hope – she could not now leave her. They were bound together, by her own act of mercy … But she was not yet ready to talk about it: before she told them the astonishing proposal, and before she did anything about it, she must do a lot more thinking.

She said: “We’re not getting anywhere with this. Let’s leave it. How about a drink?”

Mrs Bannister waited for Paul Marchant in the bar of the Copley-Plaza Hotel. It was the Merry-Go-Round bar, and she sat at a table on the merry-go-round itself, the circular platform-and-counter which, turning steadily throughout the drinking day, seemed to be assuring the customers that the world was a gay and whirling place, with alcohol at its core. It was a favourite haunt of Mrs Bannister and Paul, and they often spent an evening there, secure in their ten-year companionship, needing nothing for contentment save the room idling past them, and lazy, petering-out talk, and two drinks an hour. But this evening, she thought, was not likely to be a contented one; for she had come to her decision at last, and she would tell him about it in a moment, and he was not going to like what he heard.