I was wrong. Ernest Lindop doesn’t hate me.
He’s disappointed.
That’s what it is. Disappointment. Not hate. I wish it was hate. Hate is easier.
It sounds pretty innocent, doesn’t it? You hear parents say it all the time. Teachers. “I’m disappointed in you.”
That’s nothing. When somebody who was always laughing suddenly stops—when you look in a kid’s eyes just at the moment when it hits him that you haven’t been his friend after all—when you see somebody so sad that you know a hundred sucker punches to the gut couldn’t hurt him as much as the words you just said—that’s disappointment.