It was obvious that they wanted her and everything she recalled to go away. So she’d stayed away, from the drawing room and the quiet dining room and croquet on the lawn. She’d let them carry out their stoic summer efforts. Now, the day before they were due to go home, this last day of summer at Strachur, Enid sat on the stairs from the nursery, not daring to go down, not daring to go back.

But every minute more would make her mother’s anger worse, and their voices grew louder as she reached the drawing room door. She heard Douglas say, “He’s a child. He’s not some—” Whatever he was going to say he stopped when he saw her. He leant his arm on the mantelpiece while Joan looked out of the window and Sybil, frills to her neck, her blue eyes locked on the fire, clenched her jaw, and kept her chin up.

Enid said, “Has Glendower gone?”

Sybil jolted to life as Enid sat down. They were in opposing chairs, one on either side of the hearth. The room, almost perfectly square, the windows shuttered, the fire lit, was hung with Japanese tapestry and lit with glittering lamps. A large black cherry-wood cabinet inlaid with mother-of-pearl stood against one wall. Enid had played with it as a child; she and Ivar pulling open the big doors then, up on chairs, opening each one of the thirty-seven drawers. They’d hidden special objects for each other to find: a clay pipe, a silver cross, a lock of hair. “How long has he been like this?” Her mother’s voice grabbed her attention.

“How long?” said Enid. “Since he fell. You’ve been here. We all have.”

“Enid,” said Douglas. “She means, before.”

“He was normal before.” Enid looked from Douglas to her mother.

“No,” said Douglas. “He wasn’t.”

“He’s clumsy,” said Enid. “He’s always been clumsy.” Like Joan, she wanted to say, but Joan had grown out of it.

“Anyone can see he hasn’t been developing normally,” said Douglas. He left the fireplace and sat heavily on the silk settee, his arm outstretched along the back, his legs crossed.

“You said I wrapped him in cotton wool,” said Enid.

“A perfectly healthy child,” interrupted Sybil, “does not fall and cut his head and instantly lose the power of sight and limb. I’ve spent an hour with Glendower. He fully expected him to make some sort of recovery, or—” She failed to find the word, or the word was so insistent she refused to say it. Either way, Sybil gave a short, efficient sniff and tried again. “He has informed me that it is his view that a condition—”

“What condition?” Enid bit the corner of her thumbnail. Her teeth clenched on a piece of loose skin. She tore at it then looked down at the spot of blood, which rose with sharp, immediate pain.