‘There’s been a message from Lorna. Sheila took a call from the States while I was at the trustees’ meeting in Perth. She looked for you, but you’d just gone to fetch Rory and she had to go home before you got back.’ Sheila Shepherd was Giles’s long-standing secretary, much loved by all the family. She had loathed Lorna when they had briefly had to work together during the turbulent summer when Lorna had tried to reclaim Giles from her sister and install herself as mistress of Glendrochatt.

‘I bet it wasn’t Lorna herself who rang.’

‘No, it was her PA, but she condescended to give Sheila a list of times and numbers when we might catch Lorna. Bloody cheek! Apparently Lorna and her creepy old senator are coming over to London soon and it “might be convenient” for them to take Rory home with them. Decent of them to let us know,’ said Giles with heavy irony. ‘It’s lucky I wasn’t there. I might have blown my top.’

Husband and wife looked at each other, both aware that complicated, unresolved issues were bound to come up; both unsure of what they really felt about the child; both afraid of saying something that could never be unsaid and might inflict lasting damage on their relationship.

Isobel spoke first. ‘Poor Rory,’ she said, ‘poor little boy! Shoved from pillar to post – a pawn in a spiteful grown-up game.’

‘You’ve been so good with him . . . so fair; so loving. You’re very generous, Izzy, don’t think I’m not deeply aware of it, but it does make for difficulties. You must be itching for him to go.’

Isobel took her dressing gown down from the hook behind the door, wrapped it round herself and tied the sash tightly round her waist with a look of great concentration, as though she feared she might be scrutinised by hostile, prying eyes.

‘I thought I was,’ she said. ‘It will certainly make life a whole lot easier to be without him . . . and oh, Giles, I shan’t have to fight myself over this awful jealousy thing the whole time – about you and Lorna, about you and Rory, about Rory and Ed. You can’t imagine how I dislike myself sometimes at the moment. It’s a nightmare.’ She paused, and looked at him. ‘But do you know,’ she continued, on a note of surprise, ‘all I feel right now is dread at the thought of telling him he’s going back. I only agreed to have him because I knew Mum and Dad would have wanted me to . . . and now there are no grandparents to come to his rescue any more and I hate to think what sort of life he’ll have with Lorna.’

‘You don’t think perhaps he’ll be anxious to see his mum again?’ Giles suggested cautiously, much moved by her words.