She struggled back into her swimsuit, feeling sore. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. In her dreams, her and Nipper having sex was something that happened on their honeymoon, after they were married, because he couldn’t live without her and he told her so, all the time. You’re the love of my life, Milly. I adore you. Only in reality Nipper had never said that to her, not once, and she knew he never would. And now they’d had sex and she felt cheap and used and dirty.

‘Harlan?’ Nipper was laughing, like it was a joke. ‘Was he? That dirty bastard! Well, maybe he learned something.’

Milly surged past Nipper and opened the door and stepped out into the fresh air. Harlan was back on his sunbed, but when she came out he looked across, grinning, and said: ‘Having fun, Milly?’

Milly didn’t answer. She was aware of Nipper coming out behind her and she didn’t want to stay here a minute longer. She tore off indoors, and went upstairs.

67

Outside Harlan’s room, Milly paused.

That rotten shit.

She remembered all too well when he’d come into the house for the first time, looking all around him like he would eat the damned place if he could. He’d had a choice of rooms, but weirdly he’d chosen the smallest, the most enclosed – with no view. Harlan had a taste for small spaces, whereas Milly hated them. He loved nothing better than being in that little cubby-hole down in the reptile house where the various feeds were kept, reading his books about all the weird and frankly creepy things him and Dad kept down there.

Self-pity swamped her then. She’d been humiliated and hadn’t received a single bit of sympathy from Nipper. She was sore, uncomfortable. God, what did she have in her life, really? That arsehole for a brother. Well he wasn’t even a brother, not really. He was adopted. And she hated him. Mum was always sitting in a corner crying, scribbling in her journals and she still swore that sometimes she could hear baby Jake crying. That was just spooky, bloody awful. Then Mum would be carted off to the clinic again to be given heavy-duty pills to calm her down, and she’d be like a zombie.