The Nightlife of the Blind

Revisiting the wild passions of youth

There is something special about meeting an old acquaintance by chance. A reunion with someone you were close to a long time ago always seems a bit miraculous. But for the blind especially this is a very unlikely occurrence, as you might as well pass one another by without even knowing it.

So in 1984, at the age of sixty-one, Daisy Hayes was quite thrilled to encounter her old classmate Janet, blind like her, in her doctor's waiting room. Then a disturbing fact became clear: Janet did not have such fond memories of our blind sleuth when she was a schoolgirl. She even asked, "Remember the night Vicky died? I've always wanted to know: did you push her down the stairs?"

Suddenly Daisy found herself accused of murder; she was appalled, and asked herself, "Do all my old schoolmates think I pushed Vicky? How can I prove my innocence forty years after the facts?" To achieve just that, she was forced to go rooting in a distant past, with shocking results.