“And what was he like as a dad?”

“I don’t know how to answer that. He wasn’t exactly nice, by any stretch of the imagination, but he was my dad and . . .”

He stopped again, and I stroked his hand grudgingly. I’d have needed a heart of stone to make no gesture at all.

“Well.” Cory’s voice took on a shaky lightness. “I was going to say he loved me in his own way, but I’m not even sure what that means.”

“Why? What did he do to you?” I asked the question too quickly, making it sound like raw curiosity—which, in part, it was. Fair enough, I thought, when Cory shook his head and pressed his lips shut. I let it go and waited for him to carry on.

“I’ve told you about my mother’s parties, haven’t I, and all the friends she kept up with? She was an extrovert, a minor celebrity, an art collector, a party animal, used to throwing her money around. I know it’s hard to believe when you see her now. My father hated parties and extravagance, but he was away a lot so . . .”

“While the cat was away?”

“Exactly.”

Cory shifted his position and the joists creaked under his weight. The noise was almost human, like the groan of a tired man, and I glanced over my shoulder to make sure we were alone.

“After his death, my mother changed; she became withdrawn and afraid. You’d think she’d have been wild with relief, but it didn’t work out like that, somehow. Friends still came to visit—or they did to begin with—but she didn’t enjoy their company anymore. She would come across as reserved, or distracted, or else she’d take offence at the tiniest thing.”

“Like what?”

Cory thought.

“Like, for example, when one of her friends patted me on the back and said, ‘Your father would be proud.’ It wasn’t for anything important—I think I’d been selected for the school cricket team—but my mother told him to apologise or leave.”

“And which did he do?”

“He left.”

I considered the story.

“Did you play?”

“What, for the cricket team? I can’t remember. No, I don’t think so. I was off school a lot that summer with illness.”

I was going to ask what kind of illness, but he’d already carried on.

“My mother . . . she just became odd. She started talking to herself a lot. There were arguments with my dead father, conversations with the house, murmurings I couldn’t quite catch. She moved out of her big bedroom at the front of the house and into the dark little room you’ve seen. I was scared, but I didn’t know what to do. Gradually people stopped coming to Byrne Hall—or perhaps she stopped inviting them, I’m not sure which way round it happened.”