Something about the stillness of the air in the room, that heavy, dusty air that only really exists in old country houses, made less for breathing than to carry the ticking and chiming of ancient clocks, made him stop and open the bag. Without thinking, he reached for the cigarettes – Murads, one of his favourite boxes, lime-green and orange, decorated with an Egyptian beauty guarded by two dog-faced statues – and opened the box. He let his fingers paddle across the cigarettes, enjoying the faint ribbing of the paper, the tiny, ornate gold lettering. He was quite oblivious until a fist closed around his hair and jerked him upright. The woman who had been talking to Daddy. She held him there, silently, on tiptoe, just about able to feel the parquet slithering under his shoes. Her narrow, pigeon-grey eyes bored into his. Not daring to move a muscle of his face, in case he started to blub, he held out the box. She accepted it with her free hand.

‘You’re Jim Collyer’s boy.’ Her voice was as cool and smooth as a silver letter opener. He nodded, terrified.

Her fist opened then, releasing him, and he lost his balance and fell hard onto his bottom. Through a film of tears he watched the woman stoop, pick up her bag (red fingernails vivid against the crocodile hide), extract the lighter. Not Mum’s lighter after all. Not her bag. Almost the same, but now he sees … There was a rustle, the soft, crumpled poff of the flint and striker. Then red nails were in front of his face, and, between them, a lit cigarette.

‘Take it then, you little shit.’

And he took it, sitting there on the floor beneath the inlaid chinoiserie table, on the waxy parquet. He took it between the first and second fingers of his right hand, the way you hold a cigarette, though he had never even taken one out of the box before. He didn’t dare to look up, but he felt the woman’s eyes still on him. So, because he knew what she wanted him to do, he put the thing to his lips and sucked, hard, as if it were a drinking straw. His mouth filled with hot, burning smoke. He choked, retched. The woman’s slender, stocking-clad leg flexed in front of him, the hem of her skirt rippling. He heard, beyond the cacophony of his own distress, the snap of the handbag clasp. He was drowning.

‘Mrs Leeds? Where have you got to?’ Daddy’s voice. Heels clicked, leaving him alone. Fire lapped at his windpipe, blossomed in his chest. He sobbed, at last. Then he took another puff.