The air was suddenly cool and dark. In the hall she took off his wet trousers and pants, bundled them in her hand and wrapped him in her cotton shawl. “Stay here.” She sat him on a chair beneath a marble bust of her grandfather. A little boy, swinging his legs, stared over by the blind white eyes of a Duke. In the laundry she dumped the soiled clothes in a basket and found a pair of clean pyjamas in a pile of ironing. The pile toppled as she pulled them out; somebody’s shirt, a nightgown and a petticoat fell to the stone floor. She left them there. He was still sitting beneath the Duke when she hurried back through the green baize door. He shrugged the shawl off and untangled it from his legs. She lifted him to his feet and slipped the pyjamas on, one leg, then the other, and pulled them up to his waist. “Go up to the nursery.” The stairs only narrowed for the top flight. “Nanny will find you clean trousers.” The first three were wide and shallow. He was tall enough to hold the bannister. He’d gone up on his own before. “I’ll watch from here.” She needed a glass of water. Her lips were dry, her hands damp. “Nanny,” she called up the stairs. “Go on.”

She tried to mother, she really did, but it always felt like she was stabbing at something she couldn’t fully see – time with him always ended in wet trousers or something broken, a pair of scissors he shouldn’t have picked up, or a cup dropped. She had hopes for herself, always hope that she could do it – she watched him climb the first set of stairs, his little hand reaching up to the bannister rail – and then she’d run out of steam, get a headache, want to climb into her own bed and wish none of it had ever happened.

He reached the first turn. Her head throbbed. “Stay with nanny.” It wasn’t his fault. Even if – she watched his hand disappear – even if he— She couldn’t even say it in her head anymore. Sometimes she thought he was just a normal little boy and she was imagining everything. She went back along the hall to the dining room. On the sideboard was a pitcher of water with a lemon slice floating at the top. She poured herself a glass and drank it in one. Her head was splitting. Nanny would have to cope.

That was when she heard the scream.