Hélène poured out the tea and passed him a cup. ‘Try the lemon cake,’ she said. ‘It’s a speciality of the house.’

The assertion blithely made, as if they were taking tea at a five-star resort and not a heavily guarded loony bin. But he accepted the offer. The cake was delicious and for a moment, he pretended he was in one of the private dining halls at St Catharine’s. That when he was finished and the tea tray cleared away, he could gather his things and return to the hum and buzz of his laboratory, his students busily working on their research projects. Their journal club meeting set to discuss the most recent publications.

‘Now, tell me what’s going on with you,’ she said, tapping him on the wrist with a manicured nail. ‘From the look of things, you need to shape up and ride straight, or you’ll be stuck here forever.’

Vidor was mystified by her change in character. A complete pivot from bonkers to bully in the space of a millisecond. He’d always thought her a harmless old thing, what with those bats in her belfry. Now, she was tart as a school mistress. Perhaps her meds had been changed as well.

Vidor’s gaze skittered away from her piercing look. The silence stretched out awkwardly.

‘You know, I’ve felt funny the past few days. Ever since I was attacked by that man in the village. I’ve been having strange dreams, and during the day I feel like I lose chunks of time. I’ll look up to find the sun has gone down or that I’ve finished my breakfast, but I can’t recall having eaten it.’

‘What you need is to start facing your fears,’ Hélène said, handing him another slice of cake. ‘Get at the root of the matter. Face whatever it was that brought you here.’ She met his eyes. ‘Otherwise you’ll end up like me, no longer the master of your own fate.’ She sank into the depths of the chair until her face was in shadow.

The firelight gleamed on the emerald stones in her ears. Her hair, the colour of summer wheat threaded with grey, was freshly styled, as if she’d come straight from the beauty salon. How long had she been a patient? Rumour had it she’d been here for years. At the thought of spending the rest of his life in this place, his heart jerked oddly, like a frightened creature struggling to break free. No, absolutely not. He would not end up like Hélène, forever locked in a gilded cage. He eyed the Chanel bag at her feet, and his panic evaporated. She was mad, of course, and only a crazy person would listen to a madwoman’s advice. Even if her counsel made sense, he had no idea how to heal the so-called wound he was supposedly cursed with.