Douglas picked up the dressing-gown cord which stuck and twirled from around the chair legs as he pulled it loose. With it looped in his hand he leaned down to Fagus. He stroked the hair from his eyes, kissed him and walked out, the cord trailing after him.

Downstairs on the sitting-room table, the medicine bottles she’d been hiding were collected in a group. Douglas stood beside them, a whisky in one hand, a cigarette in the other. A fire danced prettily in the hearth. Enid sat neatly in her armchair and reached purposefully for her embroidery. So what if he knew? Who was he to judge? He went off every week to a life in London. He had her income and the freedom it bought him to go hunting and play with his car. What did he know of loneliness and a life lost, a son unable to look at her, a mother and sister who wouldn’t? He had everything he wanted.

“Everett found these under the bed.”

“That’s where I keep them.” She thought she’d pushed them into the corner.

“Empty.”

“I’ve used them all up. I must have forgotten to throw them away.”

He picked up one of the bottles. “The date on this one is from a week ago.”

“Is it?”

“What have you done with his medicine, Enid?”

“Everett collects it. She has the prescription. She must have picked up an empty one from the chemist.” She shoved the needle and it jerked suddenly through the embroidery pattern, piercing the pad of her finger. She sucked the spot of blood.

“But you haven’t sent her out for a new one?” Douglas stayed by the table, the bottle in his hand.

“Apparently not.”

“Even though he’s supposed to have three of these pills a day?”

The parochial medic had swapped one prescription for another. He’d said marked improvement, and, in her head, Enid had laughed.

Douglas put the bottle down. “She called me at the office.”

Enid unpicked a stitch that had got tangled at the back. “Everett?”

“She told me she thought I should come home at once. She said your behaviour, the way you’ve been behaving – she said she’s been worried for quite some time, and then she found these, and ropes, under the bed. She said she’d noticed marks on Fagus’ legs – and then she found the ropes.”

She should have kept the door locked from the outside as well.

“She said you stay in there for hours and won’t let her in.”

Enid drew a long blue woollen thread through a hole, part of the eye of a pheasant in a pleasant country scene. “Can I not care for my boy?”

“She said you threw a bowl of soup down the stairs.”