‘Yes,’ Nina laughed, flashing a sudden smile. ‘But then I always did . . . No, this still feels like something more.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Hanna’s up to something.’

Bell remembered them in bed together, skin on skin, limbs intertwined, and she inhaled sharply. ‘It’s the guilt. She still loves Max and she feels torn, she’s been trying to do the right thing by them both, but I think she’s made her choice.

‘Emil certainly has,’ Nina muttered.

‘Whatever happened in their past, things are different between them now and I think the accident has, in some perverse way, saved their marriage – if, as you say, it was previously failing,’ Bell said. ‘Hanna told me herself Emil’s a different man to the one she married; in the process of dealing with his recovery, it seems they’ve fallen for each other all over again.’

Nina dismissed her theory with a horsey toss of her head. ‘He’s fallen for you, Bell, he’s just too pig-headed to face it because you don’t fit into his “masterplan”.’ She made quote marks with her fingers. ‘And you’ve fallen for him too. There’s not many other reasons to be sitting crying on the stairs.’

Bell looked away, not wanting to hear it, other words still echoing in her head. It can’t be you. Nina tutted disappointedly. ‘You should be fighting for him.’

I want my family back. I don’t want to want you. ‘He wants Hanna,’ she said flatly. It was a simple and undeniable truth. ‘Hanna and Linus, and nothing – and no one – will stop him from getting them back.’

Nina fell quiet, distracted. ‘Hmm. Actually . . . that may not be strictly true,’ she murmured. ‘There’s likely someone who knows more than he’ll tell.’ She was watching something further down the long hall, and Bell followed her gaze. Måns was watering a pale peach potted rose.

‘You think Måns . . .?’ Bell looked back at Nina, wondering why she was so determined to believe there had to be another reason for Hanna being with Emil. Why couldn’t she accept that if they’d fallen in love once before, it could have happened again?

‘He knows something, possibly.’

‘Then speak to him.’

Nina gave a frustrated exhale. ‘He’d never tell me something about my brother’s private life.’ She gave a mirthless bark. ‘Ha, he’d only tell Emil himself if Emil actually asked the right question.’ She shook her head. ‘Like I said, discretion’s such a fucking pain.’

They watched Måns carefully tend to the plant, both of them seeing different things – to Nina, he was a keeper of secrets; to Bell, he was just an elderly man dead-heading with gentle fingers.

‘I should go,’ Nina sighed after a moment. ‘I don’t want Hanna relaxing too much in my absence.’ She rose, giving a sharp-eyed smile. ‘I may not be able to stop this fiasco but I have to be allowed my sport at least.’

Bell watched her go, feeling a stab of pity for her boss. But it seemed to Bell that beneath the sleekly threatening exterior, Nina was more Labrador than Doberman. And she loved her little brother, that much was undeniable.