Not that she disliked children; she’d dreamed about having one someday, although admittedly that possibility was becoming more and more remote.

Some of her friends had babies, and she’d had a few cuddles, although she tended to hand them back when they became slobbery or sticky, or started to cry. Older children were cute in theory, but they scared her a bit, and they were alien, just as Zac was, with his sullen silences, his difficult behaviour, his cracked veneer of bored indifference, with a sudden rage sometimes shining through that both alarmed and moved her, because part of her understood it, at least a bit.

His mother had just checked herself into rehab, without, it seemed, any warning. Laurel didn’t know what their relationship had been before that but judging by the circumstances as well as Zac’s behaviour she had a feeling it hadn’t been stellar.

“I think there’s nothing more to be said, then,” she said finally, with a useless attempt at dignity, and rose from her chair. “Zac?”

Heaving another bored sigh, Zac unfolded his lanky form from his chair and strode out of the room without looking at his former headmaster or his aunt.

A few minutes later, they were standing outside the school’s venerable doors in Wimbledon, an arctic wind cutting through Laurel’s jumper; she’d forgotten to put on a coat when she’d received the phone call from the headmaster’s PA to come immediately.

She shivered as she clicked the key fob to unlock her sister’s behemoth of a shiny black Rover, all gleaming chrome and supple leather, with a smell of air freshener and not so much as a crumb or a candy wrapper to sully its pristine surfaces. Zac threw himself into the front seat and slid out his phone, his head angled away from Laurel.

Now what? It was just a little over a week till Christmas, and Abby wasn’t meant to receive visitors until January, a full four weeks after she’d checked herself in.

When Laurel had called the rehab facility—a place, she saw online, that cost nearly a thousand pounds a night—they’d practically scolded her.

“Miss Dalton requests no contact until her period of treatment is over.”

“But I’m taking care of her son,” Laurel had said in exasperation. “Doesn’t she care about that?”

“I believe she’s made all the necessary arrangements, but if you feel incapable of caring for him, then perhaps we need to ring—”

“No, never mind,” Laurel had said hastily. The last thing she wanted to do was get child protection services involved. “I just wanted some information.” Which she hadn’t received, naturally.

“Well?” she asked Zac now. “Do you have anything to say about all this?”

Shrug. Of course.

Laurel took a deep breath as she rested her hands on the steering wheel. “You set fire to the chemistry lab, Zac?” she stated, a faint question mark in her tone; the headmaster had informed her of his crime before she’d so much as sat down, but it still seemed unbelievable, even for Zac.