“I’m a grizzly bear,” Mr. Byrne roared, faraway, “and you’re a slippery fish!”

Diana paused with the vase above her head and narrowed her eyes against the setting sun. Cory was sobbing—sobbing with laughter. The vase grew heavy as she watched, and her arms began to tremble.

“I’m going to eat you up!”

“Daddy, no!”

Squeals of hilarity; gleeful growling.

She ought to have tiptoed away and left them to it. She ought to have been glad. Seconds passed. Diana glanced up at the vase—a hideous brown-and-green object, crawling with Chinese dragons.

“Tickle me again, Daddy!”

Diana leaned back and hurled the vase through the front door, exploding it against one of the serene white pillars that supported the porch.

Mr. Byrne placed Cory on the grass and strode toward the house, picking up a couple of the larger shards of porcelain on his way, only to drop them again.

“Daddy?”

Diana retreated, but her husband caught up with her in the hall, yanking her by the hair and exposing her neck. He shoved her up against the wall so that her face was squashed against the cold plaster, and then he put his lips to her ear.

“Cory,” she murmured, before he had time to speak.

Mr. Byrne turned and saw what she had seen—their son, watching from the doorway—and he let her go.

Diana presses her face into the pillow and tries to work out whether it’s worse to remember those times, or to imagine Cory in the garden now, with the red-haired girl.

She never did find out what her husband intended to say—or do—about the vase. He left the same evening—a business trip to New York—and by the time he came back a fortnight later the bruises had faded from her cheek and she’d filled the gap on the hall table with a bowl of roses. He made no comment and neither did she.

9

The sunshine felt heavy on my head as I emerged from the front door. I’d braced myself for a scene but Dad was on the other side of the lawn, gazing up at a cedar tree and patting its trunk, as if it were a prize-winning horse. Cory had just re-joined him, having found his shoes.

Nothing altered in Cory’s demeanour when he saw me. He didn’t drop everything and run to me across the grass—he didn’t even stop talking—he just waved a friendly wave as from one ordinary person to another. Presumably he alerted Dad to my presence, because he turned and waved, too, before resuming his examination of the tree.

Something moved across one of the windows on the third floor and I looked up, but there was nobody there, only the sunlight dancing through the leaves and glancing off the glass. I turned my back on Byrne Hall and rubbed my arms against the nonexistent cold. However closely I searched my skin from wrist to shoulder, last night’s kisses had left no trace. I was strangely glad of the grass stains on my dress, although I suppose they made me look a mess.