Mary puts the gun down behind her and leans back on her hands. ‘Show me anyone who’s survived an ordeal and I’ll show you a shrink in the making,’ she says. ‘Ally is a good word. What about you, Ruth? Aidan’s hurt you too, hasn’t he? Playing games with you, messing with your head. And Stephen Elton hurt you.’ She pulls a packet of Marlboro Reds and a lighter out of her pocket, lights one. ‘All women whose lives have been ruined by men are my allies. All of them. If we organised ourselves, we could be the world’s most powerful army.’

‘You called yourself Mary Trelease. You bought . . . house . . .’ I have to talk, to stop myself thinking about my own helplessness.

‘Shall we speed this up?’ says Mary impatiently. ‘I moved to Spilling when I found out Aidan lived there. What sort of man moves back to the town where he spent his miserable childhood? You might want to think about that.’ I turn my face away from her cigarette, breathing is hard enough without the smoke. ‘Fifteen Megson Crescent is the house he grew up in. I had to have it, obviously, so I bribed the owners out.’

‘You called yourself Mary Trelease.’

‘I changed my name legally. I am Mary Trelease.’

‘You started painting because painting . . . was his,’ I murmur, pulling my mind back as it starts to drift. Get to the end. ‘Wasn’t . . . enough that you’d destroyed his work. Everything that . . . had been his . . .’

‘What? Ruth!’

She’s patting my face. ‘I’m still here,’ I say. Reassuring her. She wants to hear the story. ‘Painting. You . . . took it away from Aidan. Made it yours. You were good at it. Better.’

‘Yes,’ Mary stresses the word. ‘I was better than him. He gave up. I never give up. You only need to look at our backgrounds to understand why. The shrink I saw, the one who told me to write my story in the third person—you know what else she told me?’

I try to shake my head, but it won’t move. My body is numb, detaching from the pain. I can’t feel anything but my thoughts: frail, flickering threads I’m trying hard to hold on to.

‘Ninety-five per cent of her work is undoing psychological damage done to people in childhood, by their parents. Ninety-five per cent.’ Mary sounds angry. ‘Can you believe that? I was in the other five per cent, the tiny minority. I started from a position of safety and happiness: an adoring mum and dad, before I disgraced them and brought suicide and madness to the family. Money, and the best education it could buy. I’ve always believed in my own talents and abilities. Aidan never has. His childhood was an eighteen-year prison sentence.’

‘Why?’ I fight to stay conscious.