‘There I was, dashing around, making her ladyship a mug of warm milk with a pinch of nutmeg sprinkled on the top, just the way she likes it, when your Mikey, Sinead and Bernie burst through the back door into the kitchen and near scared the life out of me,’ Jamie had said, clutching a hand to his chest at this point. ‘Then the next thing I know, there’s this almighty palaver with Mikey running up the stairs and yelling for Cora to get up. To get her, and I quote, “lazy, selfish, conniving backside out of the bed at once”. Well, obviously I elbowed my way round them and into Cora’s bedroom with the intention of putting a stop to it all, thinking Mikey had seriously lost the plot, figuring all that financial wheeling and dealing he does had addled his brain. And I know your mother can be extremely difficult and controlling but … well, she was in my care and Mikey was absolutely livid. Who knew what he was capable of? But there he was, ripping a camera and a bundle of wires from the top of the wardrobe while Bernie was shoving an iPhone screen into my face! “Watch this!” Bernie had instructed, you know, in that bossy way she has. And so I did. Bold as brass your mother was, Grace, mooching around her bedroom without a care in the world. The camera had caught Cora practically springing out of bed every time I left the room. And to think they installed a camera to catch me out. Flaming cheek. But … and if that wasn’t bad enough … the proverbial cherry on the top of the very mucky cake that Cora had cooked up, was a film clip of her wiggling her ample hips and doing a shoulder-shimmy in time to the Countdown theme tune!’

At this point Grace’s eyes had almost popped right out of her head, barely able to believe what she was hearing, before she had then confronted her mother too, demanding a full explanation, and remembering that time when she had wondered how things had moved themselves around in Cora’s bedroom. Well, now she knew! Cora had been playing her daughter for all that time.