Definitive answers are easier to deal with than diffuse ones. This is to do with Hope and its nature. Hope is a parasite on the human body, which lives in full-scale symbiosis with the human heart. It is not enough to put it in a straitjacket and lock it up in dark corners. Starvation rations do not help either; a parasite cannot be put on a diet of bread and water. The supply of nourishment must be completely cut off. If Hope can find oxygen, it will. There can be oxygen in a poorly directed adjective, a rash adverb, a compensatory sympathetic gesture, a bodily movement, a smile, a gleam in an eye. The hopeful party will choose to remain oblivious to the fact that empathy is a mechanical force. The indifferent party automatically shows care, for self-protection and to shield the person in distress.

Hope has to be starved to death if it is not to beguile and bedazzle its host. Hope can only be killed by the brutality of clarity. Hope is cruel because it binds and entraps.

When the parasite Hope is taken from its carrier the Host, the carrier either dies or is set free.

Hope and its symbiosis, it must be said, do not believe in a change in the innermost will of the beloved. The hope that inhabits the human heart believes that this will is already present; that the beloved really — actually — wants what he pretends not to want, or does not want what he pretends to want, but has been misled by the evil world around him into wanting; in short, that things are not as they seem. That the tiny glimpse of something else is the truth.

That is what Hope is.

When Ester got home that night she went through her normal pre-bedtime routine. It was a year since Hugo had come round for dinner. They had eaten a reddish dish and he had gone to the window once an hour to smoke. In a week’s time she would have endured a year of suffering. It would intensify and become more concentrated for a few days now, but it was purer and less unclear.

There was nothing left to understand.