Bell didn’t reply and Nina took her silence as an invitation to join her on the bottom step. She shuffled over politely, making room.

‘I’ll be honest, I was rather hoping you’d be in there longer than you were.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Oh, look, deny it if you want, but I know my brother and he’s been nothing but agitated since you turned up on the scene. You’re quite the cat among the pigeons, Bell.’ Her eyes narrowed as she watched the Mogerts play. ‘. . . I don’t mind telling you I was really rather banking on you steering him off this course he’s so hell-bent on taking. I thought you were my wild card.’

Bell didn’t reply. She couldn’t. How on earth could Nina know about them? Had Emil told her?

‘Does Hanna know?’ Nina asked instead.

Slowly, uncertainly, she shook her head.

‘No.’ Nina sighed; compassion seemed to drain her. ‘I’d be the first to tell her if I thought it would make a damned difference, but Emil just won’t be deterred. As far as he’s concerned, I’m just a dog barking at the moon.’

‘I don’t know what –’ Bell faltered, worried that just to speak would incriminate her.

‘Sure you do. He’s got a second chance at life and he’s fixing his entire future to a false memory of his past. It’s such a shame. He’s worked so hard to get here; he thinks that getting his life back means having his old life back. He can’t see what a misstep he’s taking.’

Bell bit her lip. ‘But he loves Hanna.’

‘No. He thinks he does. He just doesn’t remember how it really was.’

‘What do you mean?’ she frowned.

Nina gave a sigh, sounding weary. It was a foreign sound for her to make, like a giggle or squeak. ‘Because Hanna was the last thing he saw, the first thing he saw, whatever, he thinks that means they had this great love. And Hanna is exploiting him into continuing to think that.’

‘Exploiting him?’ It was a strong word to use. ‘Are you saying they didn’t have a great love?’

‘To begin with, sure. They were as besotted as twenty-year-olds tend to be; first love, and all that. But by the time of his accident . . .’ She trailed off.

‘Things were tricky between them?’

‘More than that,’ Nina scoffed.

Bell frowned harder. ‘Was it over? Were they going to divorce?’

Nina looked over at her with laser-sharp eyes that didn’t say no. ‘What he’s chasing is just an idea, a warped memory.’ She took a deep gulp of her drink. ‘But perhaps I shouldn’t say too much; not if she is going to be my sister-in-law again . . . God, discretion’s such a fucking pain,’ she muttered.

Bell watched her, trying to figure her out – she was direct and yet oblique too. ‘So because the marriage was on the rocks – that’s why you don’t like Hanna?’

‘Oh, I never did, I won’t lie. I always thought he was more in love with her than she was with him. She was going out with a friend of his when she met him. She was that sort of girl, always climbing up, up, up . . . I thought she was with him for the –’ She twirled her hands in the air, indicating the house and everything it represented: their family, fortune, lifestyle.