‘Of course, we don’t want seeing off,’ Esther replied stiffly. He was slurring his words, but part of it had to be fatigue. Lily’s insistence in the car that he no longer touched alcohol had prompted snarls of derision from Lucas, along with a terse, biting reference to the scores of broken promises that had peppered his upbringing and then continued to destroy his mother.

‘We’ll be on our way, then, John…’ she started, halting as Dylan bolted past her, reaching the armchair in three strides.

‘Gramps. I don’t want to go. They’re making me.’ He had dropped to his knees, and was patting the old man’s arms between trying to seize his hands. ‘You’ve been amazing. You’ve been… I can’t really…’

‘Off you go, now.’ John jerked his fingers free, burying them in the folds of his lap rug.

Esther had gone rigid. She had prepared herself for many things, but not this. The power the old man seemed to wield. Dylan being so in his thrall, it was as strange as it was unsettling.

‘Will Iris come by, do you think?’ Dylan’s voice was pleading now.

‘Probably.’

‘I’ll call her, shall I?’

‘No, you shall not. Get on with you, now. Do as your mum and dad say.’

‘But I’ve got presents for you, Gramps. I’ve left them on the bed because they’re not wrapped yet. Just a couple of books I thought you’d like. I was going to put them under the tree.’ Dylan threw a desolate glance at a small, sparsely decorated potted fir in the corner of the room.

Esther hovered at a distance, finding that she felt too like an interloper even to speak. Lucas called it grooming, but the way Dylan was talking did not sound like that. The icing exclamation marks shimmered at the back of her mind. The entire situation remained unacceptable, but now unhelpful tremors of pity were surfacing too. Because of starting to see John through Dylan’s eyes, Esther realised; her darling son, with his pure, open heart; and because, for all the ugly facts of John’s life, as a man who had caused so much damage to the people he was supposed to love and protect, her ex-father-in-law was still pitifully frail and elderly. And – as Dylan seemed more aware than any of them – it was Christmas.

‘Go on, all of you,’ John barked with such ferocity that she jumped, the pity evaporating. Dylan meekly clambered to his feet, casting sad eyes at her. ‘Before the weather closes in,’ John continued testily. ‘You’re on borrowed time as it is, I would say.’