Esther dared not look too far ahead, at the snaking hill that needed to be climbed in order to reach the upper road, which had a chance of having been gritted, Lucas had declared just before they’d left, though, from the closed expression on John’s face, Esther doubted it somehow. She had said nothing then, just as she had made no enquiry about the repeated crescendo of exchanges emanating from the sitting room. Dylan’s safety was one thing, but the rest of it was Lucas’s war. The extent of this had only truly dawned as they’d journeyed that morning, when Lucas had begun coiling into himself, wide-eyed at the unfolding familiar landscape, a man seeing ghosts.

At Lucas’s stormy entry into the house, Esther had shuddered, reaching for Lily’s hand. Her own fearful anger was darker, quieter. At the sight of her gaunt-faced ex-father-in-law stumbling into the hall, his pole-thin drinker’s frame even more painfully in evidence than two decades before, a visceral wave of sheer revulsion had coursed through her. And half-cut already, she had observed grimly, frantically looking for Dylan as John had tripped and staggered. At the sight of her son – a new, thicker-set, taller version of him – hurtling down the stairs, she had uttered a cry, dropping Lily’s hand to reach him, only to hesitate at the realisation that he was coming to the aid of the old man. The maelstrom around her had shrunk to white noise. Only Dylan had been in focus, staring about wildly as he’d propped up his grandfather. While Lucas had continued to shout, and then to bark orders, she had edged nearer Dylan, waiting until John had been hustled into the sitting room before lunging to hold him properly. She had hugged as much of him as she could get her arms around, telling him over and over how forgiven he was, how loved, before letting Lily have her turn.