It cannot hurt you the way it hurts a person still hoping to be thought well of.

I had stopped hoping to be thought well of.

I was hoping only that my son would live to be thought anything at all, one day, by anyone, and beside that hope the opinions of strangers weighed exactly nothing.

Chapter 8 — What You Really Signed For

That night, when the last guest had gone and the caterers had folded away their tables, Arthur led me down a long corridor to his private office, and he closed the heavy oak door behind us.

“The doctors already have their money,” he said, and for a moment his voice had gone so grave that a cold fear ran through me.