“Miss Campbell.” Mr. McKinley launched into the room and held out his hand. “Do forgive me. Come right this way.” He was tall, kind and gracious. Her mother always said he was exactly what one wanted in a legal man. Masses of manners, and masses of brain. He led them to a meeting room: a polished table, a stack of papers, a sideboard set with glasses and a jug of something. Of the hurried wires she’d sent the day before, three had been to him.

“Can we stop her money?”

McKinley opened one of the files. “Do you wish to make her destitute?”

“She has as little right to him as she does to an income.”

“It was your mother who set her allowance.”

“It was my mother who asked me to control it.”

“If she has him, she will have to live off something. It will put the courts in a most unhappy position: to have to choose between wealth and a mother.”

“I’m not suggesting we cut him off.”

“I should think not,” said Pat.

“Her income is one thing,” said McKinley. “His, quite another. I have here the details of his Trust.”

“Can she get hold of it?”

“No. If you recall, it will pass to him on your death, and thereafter to his son and so on.”

“We tied it very tight?”

“We did,” said McKinley. “Your sister is not entitled to any of it. However—”

“If I make her destitute, he’ll suffer.”

“While he’s with her, yes. Thereafter is another matter. I suggest a sensible line is to leave her allowance in place while demonstrating absolutely that she is an unfit mother. It will make you appear most reasonable.”

“I am most reasonable,” said Joan.

“Of course, Miss Campbell. What I meant was—”

“When will I get him back?”

“We shall have to apply to the courts in the first instance.”

“But that could take months.”

“I’m afraid the wheels of justice—”

“Jarndyce and Jarndyce?” said Pat.

“Don’t say that,” said Joan.

Jarndyce and Jarndyce. She’d read Bleak House the summer that Fagus had fallen. She’d found it splayed on the lawn, bleaching in the sun.

“We shall apply in the first instance—” repeated McKinley.

“He can’t stay there all that time, however long it takes - months.”

“I quite understand your discomfort—”

“Discomfort?”

“But until we have an order from the courts—”

“She stole him.”

“She’s his mother,” said Pat.

“He’s lived with me since he could walk.”

“I understand it’s the most terrible shock,” said McKinley.

“She’s only his mother by biological coincidence. She means nothing to him. He won’t know where he is. He doesn’t know her at all.”

“Yet she is his mother.”

“I don’t need that pointed out again,” shouted Joan.

“It’s only in the short term,” said Pat, her hand on Joan’s. “Try to be sensible.”