Diana Abbott would instead describe her mother coming to sit down, with her enormous grown-up person’s weight, on the little girl’s bed, and rubbing her daughter’s back in the nightly ritual. Why was nighttime so much itchier than the day, Diana had wanted to know. And her mother—this is one of Diana’s first memories—had told her that it is only when we are lying still at night that we notice all our itches. Intended as comfort, in the way of all explanations, the answer had disturbed Diana, and for several years it bothered her—on the way to school, or at school, or being driven home—that she must have itches to scratch that were going unattended, that the itches were constantly there, suffering, as it were, by themselves.

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