‘Oh, dear God,’ Laura said to Jake before turning on Jeremy. ‘If you knew, why didn’t you tell us?’

He avoided her eye. ‘Perhaps I should have—’

‘You’re damn right you should have!’ Jake thundered. ‘Does Janis know?’

‘If she does she hasn’t mentioned it to me.’

‘What sort of family is this?’ Jake said incredulously to Laura.

‘Not the sort I thought it was,’ she said heavily. ‘It seems that you and I haven’t done as good a job as we let ourselves think.’

What a shock it was to find that under this roof were three children concerned only with their individual needs. Two of them, though, were no longer children in the real sense. There were times when Bessie was left in their care, if only for an evening – and this was the outcome!

‘Look—’ began Jeremy.

‘No, you look!’ said his father. ‘I want to know why we were left to find out about this the way we did.’

‘All I can say, Dad, is – well, I didn’t think it was for me to be the sneak I once accused Bessie of being. And I found it funny, to tell you the truth, that a kid who once scoffed everything within sight couldn’t any more without chucking up—’

‘Funny?’ Laura shouted.

‘I stopped thinking that when I found out about her finger-down-the-throat trick.’

‘Did Bessie tell you she does that? And allow me to inform you that none of this is funny!’

‘No, I caught her at it. You two were out and after pigging it on ice cream she went upstairs. A minute or two later I went to get something from my room and I heard Bessie retching. She hadn’t locked the bathroom door and I went in to try to be helpful. I didn’t get further than the doorway though, I stopped in my tracks.’

‘Are you sure that’s what you saw her doing?’ Laura asked hopefully.

‘I’d rather not conjure up what I saw, but you can take my word for it. And something’s just come back to me, Laura – I once watched a TV documentary about girls who ate what they liked and kept slim by doing that. Bessie watched it with me. That has to be where she got the idea from. Can I switch the set on again now?’

‘No, you damn well can’t!’ said Jake. ‘And the next time I hear some clever pundit spouting that there’s no statistical evidence that kids get their ideas from TV—’

Jeremy declared before departing that it was their responsibility, not his, to monitor Bessie’s viewing, but to do so they would have to spend more evenings at home than they did.

Laura sat mentally wringing her hands, a new experience for her. ‘What are we going to do, Jake?’

‘Number one, take Bessie to a doctor.’

‘You don’t think a good talking-to would suffice?’