‘You must go,’ Elizabeth said to me. ‘Please. Don’t keep coming. It’ll make things worse.’

I looked into her pale face, lined now round the mouth and eyes and taut with fright. I wanted to take hold of her and shake her and tell her she was weak and pathetic. Instead, all I could say, contemptuously, was, ‘This is ridiculous.’

‘Katie!’ Olivia appealed to me as I was about to move away. ‘We didn’t want you to know any of this. You know Daddy’s a good man really. You won’t tell anyone, will you?’

I stared up at her. ‘No,’ I said in the end. ‘I won’t tell anyone. But for your sake, not his.’

When Olivia finally came out of her room she looked even thinner. Her manner was taut and she was sardonic and hard to reach.

‘Did you apologize?’ I asked.

‘Not exactly,’ she quipped. ‘I just told him I’d spend my days up there writing up his story for the News of the World. He soon let me out then.’

* * *

OLIVIA

Katie was so lonely when we first became friends. She needed me. And oh, yes, I needed her. She was the only one I ever came near telling about home. But I didn’t want to spoil it. I wanted her to love me. I wanted her admiration, her worship of us, of Daddy. It meant that I could pretend, and believe in it all sometimes too, like I did when I was a little girl, and for Mummy’s sake no one should know. Katie was so innocent. Sometimes she saw things but I glossed over them. I became closed by habit and could not open myself again.

Katie gave me herself. No one took much notice of her at home, and I made her flower, I know I did. But then people kept taking her away. That grandmother of hers. She was barmy but Katie had to love her of course. That was the difference between us: she could love people properly. Before, she talked only to me. And then Angus. I could see it coming long before either of them. The way he looked at her secretly. I couldn’t endure it.

What she never understood (how could she?) was that I, Olivia Kemp, had to be the one, not her. The one that men wanted. I was the pretty one. I knew what my body had to do. If my existence taught me anything it was that the way to get anywhere is to give them what they want and plenty of it and they can’t resist you. You’ve got them caught like flies in honey. Mummy couldn’t do it. It wasn’t her fault, I know that. I know she spent every waking moment trying to compensate Daddy for her inability to service him. But I was going to please them, to have them. I had to be the one.

Poor stupid William. Quite handsome in an obvious sort of way, but so middling and happy with himself. As soon as I touched him I knew my power.