There never was a moment at which Tommy broke down. He gave no evidence of a collapse into unhappiness or self-pity. From the first moment, from his first words, he was patient, calm, co-operated pleasantly with the nurses and doctors, and discussed with Anna and Molly, and even with Richard, plans for his future. He was, as the nurses kept repeating — not without a touch of that uneasiness which Anna and Molly felt so strongly — ‘A model patient’. They had never known anyone, they said — and kept saying — let alone a poor young lad of twenty, faced with such an awful fate, take it so bravely.

It was suggested that Tommy should spend some time in a training hospital for the newly blind, but he insisted on returning home. And he had made such good use of his weeks in hospital that he was already handling his food, could wash and care for himself, could move slowly around his room. Anna and Molly would sit and watch him: normal again, apparently the same as he was before, save for the black shield over sightless eyes, moving with dogged patience from bed to chair, from chair to wall, his lips pursed in concentration, the effort of his will behind every small movement. ‘No, thank you, nurse, I can manage.’ ‘No, mother, please don’t help me.’ ‘No, Anna, I don’t need help.’ And he didn’t.

It was decided that Molly’s living-room on the first floor must be turned over to Tommy — there would be fewer stairs for him to manage. This adaptation he was prepared to accept, but he insisted that her life and his, should continue as before. ‘There’s no need to make any changes, mother, I don’t want anything to be different.’ His voice had gone back to what they knew: the hysteria, the immanent giggle, the shrillness that had been in it on that evening he had visited Anna, had gone entirely. His voice, like his movements, was slow, full and controlled, every word authorized by a methodical brain. But when he said: ‘There’s no need to make changes’, the two women looked at each other, which it was safe to do now that he couldn’t see them (although they could not rid themselves of the suspicion that he knew it all the same) and they both felt the same dulled panic. For he used the words as if there had been no change, as if the fact that he was now blind was almost incidental, and that if his mother was unhappy about it it was because she chose to be, or was being fussy or nagging, like a woman becoming irritated by untidiness or a bad habit. He humoured them like a man humouring difficult women. The two watched him, looked, appalled, at each other, looked away again because of the feeling that he sensed those wordless messages of panic, watched helplessly while the boy made his tedious but apparently unpainful adjustment to the dark world which was now his.