Lucas swung round. ‘No, Dylan, I shall not get out of your grill.’ He spoke calmly, aiming for a tone that was comedic rather than critical. ‘Your mother may have seen fit to spoil you into idiocy, but I think we can now all agree that it is not a strategy that has produced positive results.’

Dylan opened his mouth to speak and then snapped it shut. His light-blue eyes narrowed into fierce glints. ‘All you and Mum want is for me to be like Lily,’ he muttered. ‘Well, I am not her.’

‘No, you are not. Nor do I want you to be. But at least your sister has never had to be reminded – time after time after time – of the incalculable value of hard work—’

‘I did work—’

Lucas snorted, a part of him glad that they were at last having the conversation crying out to be had. For two days, ever since the hideousness of Thursday morning, he had tried to go easy, to give Dylan the chance to speak – as Heidi, and Esther for that matter, had advised – but that had got them nowhere. ‘Forgive me, Dylan,’ he sneered, ‘but your grades would suggest otherwise.’

His son’s face twisted, his gaze finding the wall to his left, then his right. ‘I couldn’t… I didn’t finish… all the questions.’

Lucas went very still. ‘And why…?’ He had to pause to breathe. ‘Why was that?’

‘Dunno. Brain-freeze.’ Dylan shrugged, seeming to relax, as if this confession was momentous enough to explain everything. As if, Lucas decided with mounting exasperation and an infuriated sense of his own helplessness, his son regarded life as something that happened to him, instead of being a matter over which each human being had control.