Hobbes stood in the dark of the viewing room, his face almost touching the glass. He never took his eyes off Camilla; he never stopped listening. Every word, every detail.

‘And sometimes when I awake, even now, all these years later, I find I have dreamed myself back there, to the house called Bridlemere. Those same corridors, the same shadows and the clock ticking on the first-floor landing.’

Now Camilla stopped, her story momentarily lost.

Fairfax urged her on gently. Hobbes paid no attention to his words, only to the woman, her face, her expression, those hidden thoughts.

She made a decision and said, ‘I was nine years old. It was early in the year of 1936. Leonard, our father, was on tour with a play. He’d been away for a week or more. Mummy had been her usual self, getting drunk, staying in her room, shouting at us from afar in that glorious voice of hers, screaming sometimes, God knows for what purpose, or why. But Rosamund always took the brunt of it. She was always being called to the room, and told off for some imagined crime. Mary Estelle’s dreams had turned on her, and were eating her alive. It’s pitiful, thinking back. But I was a kid, a child, what did I know of adult feelings? Nothing at all. Instead I revelled in my freedom, which I stole nightly, slipping from my bed after lights out. The house was mine. Ghosts crept the halls with me and I was happy in their company. I far preferred them to any of my living relatives.’

Here she paused, and reflected to herself, before continuing.

‘Rosamund was eighteen years old, Nicholas a year younger. They had not yet escaped the house, and its rulings.’

It was a strange thing to say, almost as though she had jumped in time a little. But it soon became clear where the story was heading.

‘I saw them. Well, actually, I heard them first.’

Camilla’s voice had dropped low, in memory.

‘I knew every nook and cranny of that building, every narrow passageway, every door that didn’t quite close, the crooked walls. I stood at the doorway of a back bedroom, one that we hardly used, and I saw them standing there, close, embracing. Their faces in the moonlight, softly glowing, and their lips …’

Camilla seemed to have stopped breathing.

‘They were kissing.’

Again, she paused.

Fairfax asked simply, ‘Your brother and sister?’

She nodded.

‘Together?’

Yes.

The single word, the admission, was nothing more than a breath. And then louder, angrier: ‘Yes, together. I felt sick, and shivery, and yet … oh, I could not turn aside, could not look away.’ Her eyes closed and her hands settled on the table, close to each other.

Hobbes was holding his breath, hoping for the truth to be spoken. He needed to be sure. Could he dare to believe her, even now?

The nature of the tale weighed the storyteller down. Camilla’s hands now seemed to be almost digging into the tabletop. She would scratch her way out of there, if she could.