The next morning – which was Monday – at around 8.20 a.m., while Sebastian was being asked, on the Today programme, by the by, whether the tutor employed to teach his daughter had the right to work in this country: and of course he said, Yes, well, by taught I don’t mean a formal system of education, my daughter goes to Ayrness High School, but yes, of course naturally Mrs, er, the woman has the right to teach my daughter – which was an unfortunate claim because, actually, this turned out to be very much a matter for debate, Mariam’s spouse visa depending on her staying at the side of her unfaithful husband, and giving her no right whatsoever to work in Britain once she’d divorced him (which she hadn’t yet, not technically, only semi-Islamically); and thus by the time Sebastian’s office had put out a statement in the afternoon, clarifying that in fact the Pakistani woman wasn’t his daughter’s tutor, the Daily Mail had already discovered that he was wrong about the rights he had quoted her as having, while the Sun, upon its arrival in the islands, learnt that Mariam always wore a headscarf, and prayed many times daily; and later that day, Sebastian, while being grilled yet again, revealed that Mariam had been his wife’s patient; after which, the Daily Mail, in Hampstead, discovered, without too much difficulty, that she’d visited the sexual health clinic there; and soon right-wing chatter on the internet was calling Sebastian slapdash, and Zoe illegitimate, and Mariam syphilitic; while also pointing out that, thanks to the Home Secretary’s new minimum income requirement, in the future, penniless immigrants like Mariam Maher would be kept out of the country – Eva drove into Ayrness.

She waited for a moment outside the solicitor’s office, sitting in her car, her phone switched off, her stomach empty, her mind racing, reminding herself of exactly what she was here for. Then she got out, strode up to the building, and pushed her way through the door. Of course, even then, even later – especially over the ensuing week, as she endured, from afar, the public shaming of her son – she suffered qualms of conscience; knew that all three of her sons loved Harcourt House, just as they loved their father’s art collection. Or rather, that they thought of both as integral to their self-image. She knew that what she was doing would give them a terrible shock. But as Eva wrote in her notebook, Mariam and Lucija and Camille had each borne exile from their culture – as had she, in a way; it was often good for individuals to start afresh. That was the whole point of myths of exile, such as the one about Albina. Her sons had such good lives already, and a large unwieldy house like Harcourt would just be a burden to them, as it had, in part, been to her, as well as a source of unnecessary conflict. Well, from now on it would be different. Christians jeered at Hindus and Buddhists for their belief in reincarnation but that was what a house like this did to a family: it enforced repetition of habits, status, character, not to mention misogyny. And having rehearsed the arguments she had been through many times already, Eva felt strangely calm and light-headed.