“He will need adequate training – not merely in education, which, under my guidance, he will receive at Eton, but daily example of good behaviour, acceptable religious morals, and the highest social connections. None of these are available to him under the doubtful guardianship of his mother. My sister is an outcast from normal society—”

She couldn’t stop staring at Joan’s hands, so still, so rigid, clasped on the edge of the stand, the words tumbling over them.

“—She lacks any maternal instinct, and is wholly incapable of meeting any needs other than her own. With me, my nephew will receive the best of everything; with me, he will be properly equipped for the life that awaits him on my death. He inherits not only a fortune, but a name – it is for society’s good, not my own, that he must be taught to carry the twin burdens of our blood. An inheritance steeped in ancestry – what is the good of one without the other? What is the good of either, if a child lacks instruction? I think not only of him, but of his children and grandchildren. We are but guardians; all we do is pass it on. Without my hand to guide my nephew, his fortune will be frittered or stolen, and society will lose a useful member; worse, the damage his mother has wrought will be felt for generations to come.”

Would she never stop? Would she never shut up? Enid wanted to scream I am here, you know – but of course she knew. She even looked at her for a moment.

“Thank you, Miss Campbell,” said their man. A child. All of twenty. “Most eloquent. Most eloquent indeed.”

There was a pain along the centre of Enid’s back. She dropped her head and stretched her neck. She heard it click. When she raised her head again, Crowther was already standing. She couldn’t afford a solicitor and a barrister. Crowther had said he was quite used to doing both.

He smiled at Joan, who didn’t smile back. “Thank you, Miss Campbell. What a fine speech, and may I say how generous it is of you to temporarily desert the grandeur of your life, to stand in this simple court room, and declare your sister unfit to raise an heir but not, I understand, a pauper cripple, or his equally poor sister, who—” he raised his hand as if Joan had been about to interrupt him, but she hadn’t. Joan was staring open-mouthed but nothing was coming out of it. Crowther carried on, “—are as dear to her. You say you had no reason to believe she would come back; yet she did – at which point you refused to return her children to her.”

It was Crowther who’d advised her. She’d told him she was going to agree custody, but he’d said, did you sign?