She paused, frowning at the word always, unsure of her sureness, distrusting her belief. ‘If the economic and political basis of our society is the notion of separate, individual people, not responsible for one another, then the justice we look for can only be directed towards ourselves – our needs, our wants, our fighting for what we think is rightfully ours. Human nature is self-serving, surviving, survivalist – we consume by instinct. It’s natural to us. And when we’re all alone, because of the society we’re in, we get frightened, because our greatest need is other people. And in that fear and greed we need to connect, and when we do connect we can only do so badly, we dominate or are dominated.’

She paused again. She felt embarrassed, but it did no good to stay quiet and allow herself the luxury of thinking herself superior, and not take the risk. ‘All we have, then, is rational thought; it’s everything. The learning of kindness; education, teaching ourselves and others to seek out Good. As individuals, I mean, as individuals we have to force ourselves to give, and to think. When we do that we are strong enough to forget our individual selves. Then – the collective can be good,’ she finished quietly.

After dinner, Liv cleared the plates with Alex, and they went to wash up together. Bea followed.

‘We’re fine,’ said Liv. ‘We don’t need any help.’ She unwedged the kitchen door, and let it close. Bea stayed in the hall, looking at the closed door, unable to move away from it.

Griff was still at the table, playing with his iPad like a child with an abacus.

‘Come on, enough now,’ said Dan, taking her hand. ‘Come up to bed.’

‘I’ll stay down here a bit,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yes.’

She kissed him goodnight. He went up, and she stood there, alone in the hall, listening to the muffled clatters behind the baize door. She waited. Her brother’s adolescence flicked through her mind in fragments. His sudden absences from home, the expulsions, the useless punishments from Griff. She remembered his padlocked bedroom door which, broken open, revealed such small sins – bottles, Rizla papers, tins of weed.

She remembered how, in the most blameless of situations, it always felt like interrupting, to find him and Liv together. And that he felt trapped.

Bea had always dreaded proof. She rejected what she knew, what she had seen, when she was too young to understand. She almost convinced herself it was a sickness in her, to think up such a thing, until one Easter holiday she saw it. They were at their house in St Barts without Griff, when Alex was seventeen and Bea ten, she had come in from the pool one afternoon and seen, across the courtyard, through Alex’s distant, slightly open door, her mother, on her knees, with her head in her son’s lap. Both his hands were over his face and his body seemed to be reaching upwards, like a scream – but Bea had turned her head. She remembered distant music from the kitchen and a lizard on the hot wall. Less than a second’s glimpse, and she had run away. A few days’ sick headache, no appetite, exhaustion – and then back to normal. Years. She had never said a word.