The bats were released from the compartments of his mind as though someone had treacherously released a spring-catch. They assailed his whole being with their black fluttering. All the elaborate pretences he’d so carefully built were no longer any use, and he stood, stricken, confronting the finality of Lynne putting all his troubled suspicions into ugly words. Drugs…Angie…that’s how things were with Angie.

‘Sometimes I feel as though I hate her,’ Lynne said dully. ‘The things she’s done to our family, the terrible times she’s put us all through. All those promises…she goes off to some rehab place and then after a couple of weeks she nicks off and we don’t hear from her for months. A place called Lakeview, that’s where she’s off to tonight, though I don’t even know why they’re bothering to take her back. Three weeks she lasted there last time.’

‘Maybe…this time will be different,’ Seymour said wretchedly, and his voice struggled thickly through layers of angry, bewildered sadness. Angie…All those lies she’d told! All that advice she’d given him—she was one to talk! It was as though he’d been marooned on a desert island, and someone had come along and rescued him in a little boat. Promised to take him to safety. Only that person proved to know nothing about navigation, had taken him instead into rough wild seas…

‘I’m certainly not getting my hopes up,’ Lynne said. ‘I don’t even know why she’s promised to go back there. I just don’t trust her and her promises. One minute she was yelling at us saying she wouldn’t, then she broke down and started wailing that she didn’t have any choice…Oh God, it was so pathetic, you should have seen how relieved poor Mum and Dad looked last night when she said she’d give it another try. They looked so happy, believing it all. Angie’s going to stay at Lakeview six months like a good little girl and someone up there will wave a magic wand and she’ll come back completely cured…They only believe it because they’ve got to have something to hang on to. I certainly don’t any more. She’s had five years to get her act together. Sometimes I think the best thing is to forget I ever did have a sister.’

She picked up the pretty cup and saucer and wrapped them carefully in layers of clothing, placing them deep inside the plastic bag.

‘Well, if you’ve given up on her, why are you going to all that trouble?’ Seymour demanded. ‘Why don’t you just dump that thing out in the rubbish can?’