‘I suppose if I’m honest from the moment I clapped eyes on him at the airport,’ said Isobel. ‘But I’ve been trying to deny it to myself and to Giles and . . . and to anyone who could put two and two together and come up with a horribly accurate answer. The worst thing is that I’m pretty sure Amy cottoned on immediately. I think she’s waiting for us to say something and now I suppose we’ll have to.’

‘And you didn’t have any idea before?’ Louisa was astonished.

There was a pause. ‘Not . . . not for certain.’

‘Wasn’t he like Giles when he was a baby? How long was it since you’d last seen him?’

‘Believe it or not I’d never seen him before. He was born in South Africa and though my mother used to go out there to help Lorna with him a lot, Lorna always had nannies as well so she wasn’t dependent on Mum. We never went there because, after the awful trouble she caused us, we’d had a tremendous falling out with her and broken off all relationships with her. Later when my parents used to have Rory to stay for quite long periods in France without Lorna, they took great care that we never overlapped with him. I quite see why now! They must have known but it was never acknowledged. By the time my mother got ill and couldn’t cope with him any more, Lorna had moved to the States and was becoming involved with her senator. The shock of meeting Rory at the airport was awful. I thought I might pass out or something, and then I had to witness the look on Giles’s face when I got Rory back here. Nobody but my sister could have done anything like this,’ Isobel said bitterly. ‘Imagine putting your little boy – the child you were supposed to have longed for so desperately and then apparently couldn’t cope with – on a transatlantic flight in the charge of a completely unknown nanny and shipping him out to relations he’d never seen in his life before and all because she didn’t want to fall out with her new glitzy husband – who must be a real shit judging by his previous marital history. Their political life was very hectic at the time and Lorna thought Rory was better out of it. That’s what she said anyway. Also she said she wanted to mend her fences with me – and I was mug enough to fall for it – or rather to feel it was wrong to keep a feud going indefinitely. In reality I’m now sure she’s using the child as a weapon against me.’

Louisa was appalled. ‘Do you want to tell me about it? Please don’t feel you have to if you don’t want to.’