Cora picks up the sugar dispenser and pours a teaspoonful. ‘Sometimes. I’d have loved a little sister to play with.’ She stirs the sugar into her hot chocolate. I wonder how it could possibly require further sweetening. Cora looks up.

‘Ines – my mother – wanted another baby, and that felt strange at times.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes. Strange because I would have liked her to have another baby – something to cuddle and love – but I couldn’t understand why she wanted it so badly; why I wasn’t enough. Odd, thinking back on it now, to have had such conflicting feelings …’

‘I can understand that. I had days when I’d have loved a sibling, and others when I was glad it was just me.’ Be careful what you wish for. ‘But my mother never said anything about wanting another baby, so at least I didn’t have to worry that she was sad about it.’

‘Mm. Not that my mother ever said she was sad to me.’ Cora pours a second teaspoonful and dumps it into her cup, stirring vigorously. ‘She wasn’t one for opening up, but I used to hear my dad talking about it on the phone to his sister, when he thought no one was listening. Sometimes I’d pick up the extension when he was on the phone in his study.’ She says this without guile. ‘He used to talk to my auntie about being worried for my mother. How my other aunties – my mother’s sisters – seemed to just pop them out and how hard it must be for Ines. I always remember him saying that, and imagining babies popping out. Like pricking a pregnant belly as you would a balloon and the baby just popping!’ Cora smiles and there’s something slightly disturbing about it. ‘And then somehow word got out and everyone in Rowanbrook knew my mother couldn’t have any more children.’

‘That must have been hard for her.’

‘She kept her head held high, pretended she didn’t care that everyone knew so much about her personal life. She was good at that. And she escaped Rowanbrook whenever she could – visiting her family in Spain and going to retreats and health spas. She knew how to look after herself.’

‘And who looked after you?’

‘Babysitters. And my dad of course, when he wasn’t working. It’s kind of ironic though, that my mother was desperate for another baby, but hardly spent any time with me. Honestly, sometimes it felt as though she barely remembered my name.’ A pause. Her eyes widen. ‘Actually, one time she literally did forget it, when she was talking to my dad about me – she got my name wrong. Imagine that!’ A sigh. ‘It all made me feel like I was somehow defective. Forgettable. Not enough. She loved her garden and she loved her cigarillos and she loved her trips. That was it.’

It seems like a lot to disclose to someone she hardly knows, but Cora is unemotional as she sips her hot chocolate. Mark’s words ring in my ears – Ines O’Brien and her affairs ‘left, right and centre’ – and I wonder if this was part of why Ines travelled so much. Perhaps it had nothing to do with Cora. But despite how forthright she’s been, it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing I can ask and it’s not what I’m here for. What I really need to ask is what happened that morning with Lily.