Nick quickly crossed the room to him. “Father,” he said. “I’m so sorry, we didn’t—”

“Not you,” he said, pointing a shaky finger at his mother. “Her.”

“Now, now, don’t be melodramatic,” Eleanor began, but her voice lacked its usual assuredness.

“Melodramatic,” Richard repeated. “You’re right. Melodrama is inappropriate. I’d say raging bloody dramatic would be a more appropriate response. I’ve just walked into a room to confirm three separate wedding travel plans for you and me and Nicholas, to protect the direct line of succession, and learnt that we aren’t technically even in it.”

“As far as the world knows, you are,” Eleanor said.

“The world,” he said, “is not my concern right now.”

“It should be,” she said. “Perception is reality.”

“Then please, correct my perception that my reality is a cruel prank,” he said. He slumped into the room, shaking loose his necktie. “Tell me a story, Mummy,” he said sarcastically. “You certainly didn’t do much of that when I was a child, so it’s nice to get one in while you still can.”

Eleanor stared at him, then again down at the letter. “I am not sure I know how, exactly,” she admitted. “I haven’t talked about this in…” She looked at Richard. “A lifetime.”

I edged toward her. “You told me some of it,” I said. “You left out a lot, obviously, but maybe start there?”

“Please,” Nick pleaded. “This didn’t just happen to you. It happened to them, and now it’s happening to all of us, and I just…we…want to understand. Help us understand, Gran.”

Eleanor peered up at us, her four confessors, positioned around her now almost in a semicircle. She seemed diminished somehow, frail, and almost fearful. Finally, she gestured for us to take a seat.

“You came here for answers,” she said. “And there aren’t any short ones.”

I sat obligingly down in the armchair opposite her, Freddie taking the one next to me. Richard leaned slightly on the bed, as if in need of support but unwilling to sit and cede his height advantage. Nick kept pacing.

“Eleanor,” I said. “How much of what you told me was real?”