She gives him a testing look. ‘What is going on, Christopher?’

He removes the stopper cork and, emptying Amanda’s water glass into the plastic orchid, pours her a very large serving. Adds just the right amount of water, not from the plastic jug, but from the tap in the bathroom.

‘Oh, that’s much too much,’ she says, glugging down half. He watches her smile and drift into an internal reverie, humming very softly to herself, and finishing up the whisky. ‘You really are a very good boy sometimes,’ she says, returning to the present. She holds out her glass. ‘I suppose I could have just a little more.’ He fills it, his heart quickening now. Any minute now he will tell her.

A knock comes on the door and a carer pops her head round.

‘Oh, you’ve got a visitor, Amanda.’

‘We’re just having a lovely chat, aren’t we, Mother?’ he says.

Amanda side-eyes him. The carer smiles broadly and backs out of the room. Cullen goes over to the door, closes it and, with his back to Amanda so that she cannot see, turns the lock.

‘Mother, I need to tell you something,’ he says.

‘Do you?’ she says. ‘I wonder if it’s just better if you don’t.’

He moves over to the bed, takes the remote control from her bony fingers and switches off the show.

‘Put that back on!’ she barks.

‘No, Mother. I have something to say. It’s important.’

‘In that case, give me another whisky,’ she says, petulantly.

He fills her glass and watches her take one elegant sip before reaching for a plate of biscuits on her bedside table and taking a nibble on one, wrapping her tongue around the crystals of powdered sugar left at each corner of her lips.

‘I do so love a shortbread,’ she says and with a smile still playing on her mouth, she leans back against her pillows, closes her eyes and lets out a murmur of pleasure. Cullen lights on the call button at Amanda’s bedside. He puts her glass on the bedside table and slides the call button out of reach.

‘The police came…’ he begins but she lifts a staying hand, her eyes still firmly closed.

‘There you go again, you see, always ruining things. You never had the slightest regard for timing, Christopher.’

‘Mother, I’m in trouble and…’

She lifts an imperious hand. ‘Please, Christopher, don’t go on. I am too old and tired for this. Didn’t you hear me say I have a headache?’

‘Please,’ he says, feeling the hope tremble inside him like a wild bird. ‘Without you…’

The hand comes up again. ‘Christopher, if you continue to assert yourself in this way, I shall call a carer to escort you out.’