But the boy would know deep inside that it was done with love by a human being, not abstractly by a machine. Of course, that was what it amounted to; the boy would be loved. It was that simple. He would be loved, and he would know it, and that would give him the strength to face any kind of injustice. Jack had not been loved as a child; he had not even been liked. And it had almost destroyed him. He had been nothing until he had been loved. From that moment (the moment, he thought with a pang, of Billy’s death) his life
