He feels his legs go from under him, manages to make it, just, to a tub seat by the window. All the old feelings of injustice rise like dark birds disturbed in the act of picking clean a carcass.

At that moment there’s a knock on the door. He goes over to unlock it. A carer appears with a supper tray. He waits in silence, his heart pounding, lest his mother betray him. Once the carer is gone, he says, ‘I ruined everything?’

Amanda opens a single eye and looks at him with measured disdain. ‘Yes, you disappointed my expectations. First you made me lie for you. I have had to carry that lie for twenty years, Christopher. I could have gone to prison for bailing you out of your sordid teenage enterprises. And the thanks I’ve had is to be abandoned here, in this terrible place. Now you have stolen my bracelet, the only thing I had left of my mother. Don’t think I don’t know it was you.’

‘If this place is so terrible, you won’t mind leaving it,’ he says furiously. An idea has surfaced in the way a bruise surfaces, purple and green and ugly. And like a bruise he is compelled, somehow, to keep pressing and pressing, the pain spreading through his limbs into his deeper parts. His mother’s eye pops open, ominously. He has woken the spider and she is unfurling her spidery legs, readying herself.

She blinks at him. Is that a hint of fear in her eyes? Or a glint of triumph?

‘I am ready to unburden myself, Christopher. I am sick of hiding and lying for your sake.’

His mind freezes. He hears a voice hiss, ‘What are you talking about?’ and realises it is his own.

‘You always told me she let you, that girl, all those years ago. You said she didn’t mind. But she couldn’t stand you. I saw you together once, in the gardens of the college, you sidling up to her like a whipped dog, her recoiling from your presence, repelled. I could smell it on you that night, your disgusting lust. She let you? Ha! You had your way with her and then expected me to lie for you. I had to shut up and lie or wave goodbye to every hope I had. To all my dreams and aspirations for my child, my only son. But even after I’d saved you, you couldn’t keep it together, could you? The snivelling self-pity. Oh poor me, child genius, undone by a minor indiscretion. Boohoo.’ Her eyes narrow and gleam. ‘Well now someone else can know about your dirty little secret. I’m ready to finally release the poison I’ve been carrying around all these years and let someone else know the truth, that my son is a rapist and a thief, a weak, disgraceful creature, a source of nothing but shame.’