She had begun to rot, the dreadful pustules and cankers of forbidden love were spreading across her face; just as once the ghost of Joe D’Costa had rotted in the grip of the occult leprosy of guilt, so now the rancid flower of incest blossomed on my sister’s phantasmal features, and I couldn’t do it, couldn’t kiss touch look upon that intolerable spectral face, I had been on the verge of jerking away with a cry of desperate nostalgia and shame when Sonia Aziz burst in upon us with electric light and screams.