Day after day she sat with him. She wouldn’t eat, she wouldn’t move. She asked one of the servants to get a cot – one of the ones they’d played with as children, when Ivar decided they should all spend the summer sleeping under the giant cedar in the grounds of Inveraray – and bring it to the nursery for her to sleep on. They hauled it out of some garage, she heard them struggling up the stairs, and then her mother’s voice, “What on earth are you doing?” put a stop to it.

Douglas came and found her as another summer’s evening crawled shadows across the lawn. “You must eat.”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

They hadn’t changed the bandages yet, and his head looked wrapped in a tight turban, stained red on one side, as if he’d borrowed it from Joan as a prank and put it on, as though he’d been playing dress-ups with his aunt’s hats.

“You can’t do any good, staying here.”

“Can I do good anywhere else?” she snapped, or tried to, but it came out tired.

“Glendower—”

“Glendower doesn’t know anything.”

“Glendower says sleep is the best thing for him.”

“Glendower said he’d be fixed up with cake.”

“He didn’t know.”

“No, he didn’t, did he. He didn’t know.”

Douglas left and someone delivered a tray to the nursery landing. She pulled it across the threshold and sat on the floor eating cold mutton and bread. From the garden came the clack of a game of croquet gone on too long and the scream of Pat as more midges found their way into her shirt.

Enid, 1964

6

Enid, 1964

What is it to lose a child but keep them living? For everything about him to have gone except the body, the breathing lump on the bed, rucking the covers as he slept? Enid had watched and not breathed as if the focus of her attention could bring him back to normal life, but the lump of his body beneath the covers had stayed quiet and still. It had not moved.

If her family had listened when he was born, it might have been different. If they hadn’t pretended that he was the perfect replacement for every slaughtered male, she might have trusted them enough to share the truth that had stared at her from his china-blue eyes since the day he was born; she might have gone to them for help instead of staring at his body, hour upon hour. But they’d lain an air of conspiracy across the nursery floor. They’d shut their ears and clapped their hands and turned their eyes to something else.

Enid looked at her hand and found it was Mandy’s holding hers, not Fagus’. It was Mandy’s young skin against her old spattered crepe, and she was guiding her towards the lounge.