‘Oh, Iz! Sympathy doesn’t come into it. For God’s sake don’t let’s allow ourselves to be thrown right back after all we went through five years ago and after the way we’ve struggled and succeeded in getting our life back together – then Lorna would really have won. She’s deliberately lobbed a time bomb into our marriage, knowing it couldn’t be long before it exploded. Now it has. What beats me is why the hell she’s waited so long.’

‘Isn’t there some quote about revenge being a dish that’s best served cold?’

‘Ah,’ said Giles, ‘yes of course – that’s it exactly. Come on, darling,’ he went on urgently, ‘we can’t give Lorna the satisfaction of eating that dish. Somehow we’ll get through this together.’

Isobel looked at him with great misery. ‘Poor Rory,’ she said. ‘He’s such a great little boy and none of this is his fault. But – oh, Giles, I hate myself for doing it, but every time I look at him I see you, and then . . .’ She faltered and stopped, and at last came slowly over to her husband and stood looking up at him. ‘And then,’ she went on, almost in a whisper, ‘then I see Ed. Darling, special, different Ed and the contrast with how he was at Rory’s age hurts so much I don’t know what to do with myself. All those might-have-beens come flooding back and overwhelm me.’

‘I know,’ said Giles. ‘I know. Don’t think I’m not dreadfully aware of it too.’

‘But I don’t need any DNA test to tell me the truth,’ Isobel said fiercely. ‘I look at the portrait on the landing by Carlos Sanchez of you at the same age. I look at the photograph on my dressing table of you in your kilt aged five that your father gave me. They’re not just like Rory – they could be Rory. I can’t stop looking at them. First at him, then at you, then at Ed – and I know that Lorna has finally got her revenge on me for marrying you. She’s given you the perfect son we couldn’t have together. And I can’t bear it.’

This time when Giles put his arms round her she didn’t pull away. He held her close, stroking her hair, feeling her shaking with emotion – miserably conscious of her distress; terrified that a chasm was about to open up between them; filled with foreboding about the future.

Chapter Seven