‘Work?’ Rose’s chuckle was derisive. ‘No-one looks like you do because of work, darling. Oliver, is it? Take my advice. Give as good as you get.’

In his corner Gerry gave a short, hard laugh. ‘Always Oliver. He’s too damned lucky by half. Got the lot, he has, and acts like it isn’t worth tuppence.’ His voice was blurred and bitter, but there was a note of grudging admiration in it too. ‘If I was younger, if I could have my time over again …’

‘You aren’t. And you won’t.’ Rose interrupted him wearily.

Helen turned to watch him go and then looked away sharply. Just for an instant she had caught an echo of Oliver’s voice, and glimpsed the mint-brightness of his features distorted in Gerry’s. Surely their relationship was too distant for such a startling likeness, however fleeting?

Rose picked up a long greasy straggle of knitting and attacked it vigorously. When she spoke again, she seemed to have forgotten Oliver.

‘You may think he’s a wreck now, poor Gerry. But you should have seen him years ago. Handsome, and talented. Women fought to get at him. And he was so sure that he was going to be famous and rich. I used to be asked everywhere just because I was his half-sister. Ha, those were the days.’ She was laughing wheezily.

‘What happened?’

‘Bugger all. A little, early-flowering talent, that was Gerry. He had too much, too easy and too early, and he frittered the whole lot away. He’s been trying to get some of it back ever since.’

‘How sad,’ Helen said absently.

‘Sad? Not at all. Pathetic, perhaps.’ Rose’s voice was harsh. ‘He’s luckier than most. At least he had something, once. You know,’ she said, meditatively, as if it had just occurred to her, ‘I think perhaps Oliver’s a little like him.’

‘No, he isn’t.’ It was Helen’s turn to sound harsh now. ‘Oliver’s nothing like that.’

Rose’s white face hung expressionlessly in front of her like a pasty moon.

‘Oh, Oliver’s got money, of course. Not a lot, but enough to keep him going at the rate he spends it. Gerry never had that. And there’s Montcalm, and the title, and all that aristocratic rigmarole. But if you took all that away, you’d see the same thing in them both. Self-destructiveness.’

Helen remembered the inner, secret Oliver that she wanted so much to believe in. Perhaps his cool arrogance was to protect that. Not destructive, but protective. ‘I’m sure you’re wrong,’ she told Rose, as humbly as she could. There was a little, bitten-off smile at the corners of Rose’s mouth. ‘Perhaps. Tell me, love, are you serious about him?’

‘Yes. No. Does it matter?’

‘Only to you, love.’ Rose smoothed her knitting with an air of having finished the conversation. ‘Did you come down here hoping to find him?’