‘Oh, I never forget good things,’ said Kat briskly. ‘By the way, you could borrow my car, if you did want to visit Dad.’

‘I’ve told you, I don’t want to. Thank you. Not this time.’

‘It’s up to you.’

Eleanor couldn’t help laughing. ‘Are you trying to get rid of me, or something?’

‘Of course not. I’m glad you came. Thank you for coming, Eleanor.’

‘Don’t be silly. I had to. I wanted to. I’m just so pleased the bloody thing was harmless.’ Eleanor returned to the window, folding her arms and gripping her elbows. ‘I do go and see him from time to time, you know.’

‘I know you do.’

‘Not as much as you, but…’ Kat had been the favoured child, at least when they were little. And if it hadn’t been Kat in the spotlight, it had been their mother. Or God. When it came to the focus of Vincent’s attention, it was invariably Eleanor who had come last.

‘It’s fine, Ellie.’

‘It’s like visiting a corpse.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘So. What can I do now I’m here?’ Eleanor asked brightly, wanting to wrest both of them back to the reason for her visit. ‘Tea? A biscuit? Or is there something you’d like me to do? Hoovering? Shopping? I’d so like to be useful.’

‘There’s nothing, thanks. Hannah, our babysitter, and Howard are doing a brilliant job of keeping the show on the road.’ Kat lay back against her pillows, her expression growing distant.

‘Hey, guess what, I have just been commissioned to write another memoir,’ Eleanor blurted. ‘This time it’s that actor, Trevor Downs? He’s really old now but…’ She broke off, feeling foolish, as Kat’s eyes fell shut. Her sister’s skin looked starkly pale suddenly beside the white January sunlight, now spooling into the room through breaks in the cloud and falling into misty pools on the silky grey carpet. There were marbled veins at her temples that Eleanor had never noticed before, threading under her cheekbones like the blue in a soft, pearly cheese. It made her want to stroke Kat’s face, show the protective tenderness which always hovered but which never seemed able to come out.

She moved towards the bed but stopped as Kat puckered her lips, seemingly in preparation to speak, but then her mouth fell still again, the lips slack and slightly open.

Eleanor turned back to the window, feeling at a loss. The garden spread beneath her was ridiculously huge and orderly, comprising not just terraces of well-tended lawns and flower beds, but an all-weather tennis court and the smart black rectangle of a covered swimming pool. Kat had been such a wild child that there was something about this tidy state of adult affluence that Eleanor still found hard to buy into.