Stella’s swings of mood were unpredictable, savage, and cruel to a sensitive child. Carolyn hated it most when her mother made a fuss in public, but she knew that the times when Stella was silent and withdrawn caused her father the most pain. Yet whatever her mood James was gentle with his wife. He spoiled and petted her, bringing her presents, flowers, dresses. Then he was rewarded by her laughter and her tears of contrition and her protestations that she loved him more than anyone in the world had ever loved before.

After breakfast Stella went to her room. She sat in front of the mirror and stretched her long swan’s neck so that the lines of tension in her face disappeared and she looked beautiful again.

Carolyn began to stack the breakfast plates on the draining board in the smart new kitchen that Stella had planned the summer before then lost all interest in. James hovered behind her, and she felt his misery so much that she turned round to face him. Now that Aunt Alice was dead, she had no-one else left to love.

“Look what she’s doing to us!” Carolyn said.

“She’s ill,” he said.

“If she’s ill she should go to hospital.”

“She doesn’t like hospital.”

“I don’t care,” Carolyn said. “ We can’t go on like this. She’s dangerous. She makes us all different. I can’t stop being angry. The doctor thinks she should be in hospital.”

Her father looked confused. “No,” he said. “You don’t understand. She would hate it.”

Once, not when Stella was loud and dramatic, but when she was tired and childlike, James had sent for the doctor and asked for his help.

Carolyn had sat, unnoticed, at the other end of the room and listened to the conversation. She remembered quite clearly what the doctor had said.

“Can’t you give her anything?” James had pleaded. “She seems desperate.”

“It would only make her worse. That’s part of the problem.”

“What can I do?”

“Stand up to her. She knows she can manipulate you.”

“But I want to help her.”

“Then persuade her to go into hospital for a while. She needs time away from you both to sort herself out. You look after her too well. She needs to face up to her problems herself.”

“I don’t know,” James had said. “It seems so hard. I’ll think about it.”