There was a little scatter of black-and-white photographs in the file. Postcard size, some almost sepia with time. Some taken, it would appear, in the early days of the ‘Paris sequence’, when James’s body was more supple, slender; others, and there were only a sparse half dozen or so altogether, were far later. He had become adult, muscular, firm.

I held the gathered photographs in my hand like a loser’s hand at a bad game of poker. Weary with distaste. Brent Millar had, indeed, a great deal to be ashamed of: his quiet remark to me at L’Hermitage, ‘Don’t hit me, I’m a cripple’, was well said. Of course I should have struck him. Too bloody English to do that. His corruption was clear in every line of the sordid little Agendas, every one of the photographs held in my hand.

But why panic and settle such a sum for blackmail? No magazine, wherever it was, would contemplate the stuff.

Would they?

Perhaps they might just keep him ‘in sight’, as it were; he’d be followed about, wheelchair or no wheelchair.

My sad, funny little brother ranged before me in a series of very unfunny situations of extreme degradation. Humility, humiliation, bondage. Why? Florence had said that I would find the results, at L’Hermitage, and indeed she had been right. But she had said that I would never find the reason. I wonder?

I wonder if the reason for this extreme, abject desire for punishment, for pain, for abuse, was because as a golden ‘ewe lamb’, as a creature adored, cosseted, spoiled, pampered, treasured from unexpected birth, he suddenly felt the desperate need to be brutalized, to be treated savagely, dragged from adoration and defiled before witnesses. For, it would appear, his degradation had to be observed. A form of public vandalism: sullied perfection. Rip the Frans Hals, smash the Michelangelo, defecate on the altar. The uglier, more profane, the better. Punishment for the years of being too well loved.

At school, at sixteen, Mr Worth had thrashed him. The first time that a violent hand had ever been laid upon him. And he had reacted accordingly. Could this be possible? Had I perhaps found the reason after all? The church clock struck the half-hour. I chucked the photographs and copies into the file, went over to the window. In the yard below someone with a wagging torch was locking up the hens. The sky was as blue as damson skin. Far above the shadow of the cliffs, a star blazed with a diamond light; so brilliant was it that for a moment I thought it might be the lamp on some idiot hang-glider coasting down. But it was motionless. The torch bobbed back towards the house, someone was whistling ‘La Mer’.

So I knew who James was now. I did not know where he was. Yet. But it was just conceivable that I might have stumbled on ‘the reason’.