‘Exactly,’ Ingrid said, pulling herself together. ‘My father was very careful not to bring his work home with him. It was essential to have clear boundaries, under the circumstances. For him as well as the rest of us.’

Mark said, ‘The landscape’s easy to recognise. The one of the people looks like a nightmare.’

‘Actually, it’s quite factual,’ Ingrid said. ‘Crudely done, of course. But it’s much older – late forties, if I’m remembering rightly. They used to take the patients’ teeth out – there was a theory about it, something to do with gum disease making them worse. And they would have worn bandages like that after they’d had leucotomies.’

I said, ‘Leucotomies?’

‘An operation on the brain,’ Ingrid said. ‘You must have heard of it.’

‘You mean… like a lobotomy?’

‘Well, yes. It’s a particular type of brain surgery.’

‘Surgery? I thought it was pretty much a case of sticking an ice pick into someone’s skull.’

Ingrid raised her eyebrows at me. ‘They used to do it as a last resort, to relieve patients’ symptoms when nothing else could be done for them. You must remember, they didn’t have the medication then that they have now. It’s what she had. My sister. Did Mark not tell you that?’

Mark said, ‘Do we have to have this conversation? We’re about to have lunch, after all.’ And he stalked off back in the direction of the living room.

For a moment Ingrid faltered. Then her expression hardened and she turned her attention back to me.

‘I suppose it’s as well for you to know,’ she said. ‘Mark’s very squeamish about it, as you can see. If you know, you’ll be able to be sensitive about things like this if it ever comes up. Not that it’s the kind of thing that would usually come up. But I don’t know what passes for dinner-party chat these days.’

I said, ‘How come they did that to her?’

‘She’d always been backwards, but when she became a teenager she became much more wilful. If they didn’t do something, she was going to end up getting herself into trouble – that was what my mother said to me about it later. My father signed the consent form. He thought it was the best hope she had. I never saw her afterwards, but my parents did. They weren’t to know it would leave her so much worse. Manageable, which was an improvement in a way, but pretty much incapable. Or so my mother told me.’

I said, ‘How old was she? When they did it?’

‘She was eighteen. I was fourteen. I knew there was something wrong with her, of course. She used to get by in public. But only just.’

‘Did you… miss her?’

Ingrid gave me a long hard stare.

‘You have to understand, I adored my father. And for him to have a child who was like my sister… You have to remember what a stigma it was. He was a doctor. He’d devoted his whole life to caring for people like that.’ She shook her head. ‘It was brutal. I just felt so sorry for him.’