‘Right,’ Hanna said, looking wan, her eyes sliding between both men, but Max was looking away, pretending to admire the gardens. Bell knew he was only pretending because she could see the ball of his jaw, clenched in tension.

‘I’d better go and check on Linus,’ she said, stepping back away from their group. She wasn’t a guest here, after all, but an employee.

Emil’s eyes flashed towards her – the first time he’d looked at her since arriving, the first time since that night, across the bedroom – I’m awake – and she felt frozen to the spot by their burning intensity. He released her again in the next moment, and she turned away with a gasp.

‘So, thirty-one today,’ Hanna said behind her with forced levity, her voice strained with the desperate urge to see today pass without hitch. ‘My, my.’

‘Well, I still haven’t decided yet whether I should consider this my thirty-first or my twenty-fifth . . .’ she heard Emil saying as she stepped into the house.

Out of sight, Bell sagged against the wall and closed her eyes, trying to recover. The way Emil had looked at her so angrily, as though he hated her too . . . Did he despise her for her act of defiance in refusing to return? He was bristling with a hostility that was made worse by concealing it beneath a veil of manners. Outright contempt, anger and swinging fists would have been preferable to that.

She found Linus in his bedroom, sitting against the far wall beside the open window. He had his head on his knees and was rolling the Corvette back and forth on the ground, listening to the murmur of adult conversation below, the occasional shrieks drifting up of his little sisters having fun without him. Dozens of books lay face down on the floor, some of the pages ripped out and scattered around him.

‘Hey.’ He looked up, his face tear-streaked, and she felt her heart break. ‘Oh darling,’ she whispered, rushing over to him and enveloping him in a hug.

‘I’m fine,’ he said defiantly, allowing himself to be held nonetheless as she kissed his hair and rubbed his shoulders, the way he liked her to when he was sick.

They sat in silence for several minutes. She wouldn’t push him if he didn’t want to talk about it.

‘How was yesterday?’ she whispered. It had been his first full day alone here when Hanna had come back to Summer Isle, and Bell had refused to return. Already she hated herself for it.

‘. . . It was okay,’ he said eventually, his voice thick. ‘We helped get the garden ready and then we went on the helicopter.’

‘Wow, you’re so lucky. I’ve never been on one. Was it amazing?’

‘Yeah.’

She gave a little smile. ‘That didn’t sound very convincing.’

‘I’m just tired,’ he sighed, closing his eyes as a few tears silently slipped past his lashes.

‘I know you are,’ she murmured, feeling the knife twist in her heart and ruffling his hair with her fingers. ‘It’s been a busy time lately. The girls have missed you so much.’