– We’ve been thinking about it for a while, now, Mother, the three of us. Now’s our moment. It’s not yet public, but that’s the gist. They’re shaking up a lot of inconvenient legislation, cutting red tape, making Britain greener. So the place we could develop, very sensitively, would be just below the clifftop, to the east of the house. As well as Cwen. You wouldn’t see either from the house, and we could apply for access over the western side of the hill. Four holiday villas. Cwen as a private island. It’s something we haven’t exploited at all, as a family. But we should. Seb says half the cabinet go on holiday to the Hebrides. Well, they should come here, instead. People pay for remote. We paid £10,000 a week for a hunting lodge in Scotland. We were fifteen people, but still.

– Absolutely not.

– Please think about it, Mother.

–

– Mother!

GEORGE: We associated everything about Harcourt House with our father, from the attic at the top where she put the Pakistani woman to stay, to the tower in the orchard.

JUDGE: Everything? Even though your mother had lived in the islands for years by then?

Sebastian and his brothers: sitting by the pond at Harcourt, late one night, drinking White Russians. They were drunk, but still. Camille, approaching through the dark. It made her sick, how they spoke to each other out of earshot of their wives.

‘That tower, I love it almost more than the house,’ Seb was saying. ‘Typical, wonderful Dad, having it converted for us.’

‘For you!’ said Henry. ‘He had it done for me.’

‘No he didn’t, Henry,’ put in George. ‘It was for all of us, our den.’

‘Do you remember Seb trying to get in?’ Henry said. ‘Banging his little fists.’

‘Banging girls there later,’ said George.

‘I was always so happy to be included, I always took the worst part. The Roundhead—’

‘The Red Indian.’

‘The girl.’

‘They found it romantic,’ Sebastian said wistfully. ‘That tower, like an aphrodisiac. Kissing against the sunset, the view of the islands.’

‘Lucky bugger,’ said George.

‘Is that how you won Camille?’

‘Always worked for me until I met her. Quite frankly I think she finds this whole place an utter turn-off.’

‘Maybe they don’t go in for towers in the same way in France, or wherever.’

‘She says not every woman finds phallic symbols liberating.’ Sebastian sounded almost surprised as he said it.

‘You’ve always been into quickies in public places, haven’t you, Seb?’ said George.

‘Zoe was conceived in a car park,’ said Henry.

‘A playground,’ said George.

JUDGE: Weren’t you proud of what she had worked for?

HENRY: Here? In the middle of nowhere? In this nothing place? By definition, she did nothing important, except waste our money.

In Eva’s kitchen, the phone rang a third time.

– Hello, Mother.

– Hello, Sebastian, said Eva. Speak of the devil.

– Me?