Cory sat up in bed, croaky voiced and squinting. I swung round with the phone in my hand and a guilty “Oh!” implying surprise. Apparently I was still unable to smile—I tried, and came up with something that was far from nice—but I don’t suppose he could tell from there. It was barely light and the blinds were down.

“I was lying awake, thinking about the exhibition,” I said, “and it occurred to me that we still haven’t invited Dad to the opening. He’ll want notice if he’s going to do a review for the Globe.”

Cory rubbed his eyes. “But I thought . . .”

“What?”

“I thought you didn’t want to ask him?”

“Of course I want to ask him. It’s just that he’s been away, and I couldn’t get hold of him. I think he’ll be home by now.”

Forget blades and blood: humiliation was the thing. That was the way to hurt Cory Byrne.

Once I’d grasped that—some time during the early hours of the morning—I’d begun finding pleasure in the prospect of revenge. Like a seasoned sadist I lay awake, relishing every detail of my nascent plan: my father, the great critic, giving nothing away as he meandered round the Freya exhibition; Cory watching him in fatuous hope. Dad going home and picking up his pen; words blooming over his scruffy notebook and crystallising in newspaper print. The London Globe rolling off the press—copy after copy, like rapid-firing bullets—and finding its mark on half a million doormats, one Saturday morning in November.

I’d tossed and turned, and tried to imagine the moment when the newspaper fell into Cory’s hands. How would it happen? Would we go into a shop, or would he arrange to have it delivered? What did I risk by being present? Oh, but I had to be present, even if it was the end of me. It was my father’s review, but it was my revenge.

Cory’s face would glow pink as he began searching the paper, and he’d say, “Freya, come and help me, my fingers are shaking too much to turn the pages.” So I’d turn the pages for him with a slight tremor of my own, until we came to the Arts section with the featured review by Robert Lyell, and the headline . . . what would the headline be? I drifted off to sleep trying to think of something snappy. Whatever I came up with, Dad’s idea would be better. Dad knew how to fashion words into knives. He could twist them into thumbscrews and red-hot pokers.