‘Huh!’ He was struggling to contain his temper. ‘And what would you know about it? I saw what occurred and she pushed the young maid over with no provocation from the girl whatsoever. It seems to me that as long as you don’t have to spend any time with Miranda, you’re happy to let her do as she pleases. She only has to say what she wants and she gets it, and it has to stop. It’s time she learnt some social skills, and she certainly isn’t learning any from you.’

His wife began to whimper as she struggled to get her obese frame into a sitting position. As he watched he felt a wave of revulsion; there was a time when he had worshipped the very ground she walked on and he would have moved heaven and earth for her. She had been quite exquisitely beautiful when he had first met her and he had thought he was the luckiest man on earth when she had agreed to be his wife. Admittedly he had known that she had been spoilt and pampered by her parents, but then she had been the only child of a very wealthy family so he supposed that was to be expected. He had been only too happy to indulge her every whim and for a time they had been happy. Until she found that she was to have a child, and everything had changed. Looking back, he realised that she had never been keen on the physical side of their marriage, but immediately she found out she was pregnant she had barred him from her bed saying that intimacies would be dangerous for the baby. He had been so naive back then that he had believed her, but after Miranda’s birth things had got no better.

‘You surely don’t want to put me through all that again?’ she had wailed each time he visited her room. ‘Don’t you realise I could have died having Miranda?’

Eventually guilt had kept him away. She had even refused to see the child for the first few weeks after she was born. And so it had continued. Miranda could have anything she wanted as long as she didn’t bother her mother. Miss Wood had been more of a parent to her than his wife had been and now he had had enough.

‘I think it’s time we thought of sending her away to a finishing school,’ he said coldly.

Miranda’s eyes almost popped out of her head. ‘But I don’t want to go!’ she protested, horrified, as her pudgy hands clamped into fists. It wasn’t the first time her father had suggested it but this time he seemed set on the idea.