Ancient history. Alison stared back at the image of herself in the mirror. Her eyes were red-rimmed – she’d done way too much crying today, she reckoned – but other than that she looked OK, all things considered. Young, good-looking, a girl with a future. One more year, and she’d be out of here. University, perhaps Durham, where Daniel was going if he got the grades. Or perhaps another city, far away, Exeter maybe. Her fresh start, the beginning of another beginning. Solemnly she raised her hand and placed it on the glass, palm to palm with herself, then made a brief and silent pledge to be more resolute in this coming year, less daunted by circumstance. One could decide to be happy, and happiness would surely follow. This is what she’d say to Peter when he woke. Because bad as things were, they surely couldn’t now deteriorate further? Martin had done his worst, and if Peter was finished at Brown Bayley’s, so what? He hated it there anyway. He could do anything, Peter. He was clever with his hands, practical, skilful; he was wasted on a crane at the steelworks, wasted.

There was a loud clatter of something falling, or something thrown. Alison heaved a sigh at her reflection and went to the bathroom door.

‘Catherine?’ she said, and she tried the handle. For once, her mother had heeded Alison’s words and not locked herself in. She was stripped down to her knickers, sitting on the lavatory seat, trying to cut her toenails.

‘You do it,’ she said without looking up. ‘These damn things are so fiddly.’

‘I heard a crash,’ Alison said.

‘Well, it wasn’t me for once.’ Catherine glanced across at her with a half-smile and held out the nail clippers.

‘Hang on,’ Alison said. ‘Back in a tick.’

She went to Peter’s room and pushed open the door. Peter was facing her, hanging by a noose round his neck from the light flex, staring directly into her face with wide, terrified eyes. There was a chair on its side and now he seemed to be fighting to stay alive, his hands clutching uselessly at the tightening rope, his legs flailing for the chair. His mouth was opening and shutting, but he made no sound. Alison took a second to remember how to breathe, then she entered the room, picked up the chair and put it back under his feet, to take his weight. He felt the solid safety of it beneath him, and then he dropped his hands down towards his sister in a pleading, remorseful gesture, a kind of supplication. She stared at him, and backed away. That Peter could attempt this … that he could try to leave her, and in such an ugly, selfish, craven way. She saw his face, wet with sorrow, but just in this moment, her heart seemed frozen.