He wheels her back to her room, on the much-coveted corridor on the ground floor, where many rooms, Amanda’s included, have French windows out into the garden (for another £200 a week). He locates the Courvoisier she keeps in a cabinet on the wall, pours two snifters then comes to sit beside her. She taps her fingers on his hand in a musical rhythm and hums something tunelessly.

The scene puts him in mind of long nights on his own in his room as a child scarcely daring to breathe lest the sound disturb Amanda during one of her migraines. On good days, when Amanda was cheerful, he remembers her arranging his food into pleasing shapes and patterns. One time, he must have been five or six, she made his pasta into a face and when he cried and protested that he didn’t want to eat a person, she tipped the meal over his head.

He sits with his lips pressed together, waiting for the backhander that is surely about to come. As she downs the last of her brandy, he watches her mentally sharpening her knives.

‘I always think it’s such a shame…’ she says, at last, withdrawing her hand. Cullen knows what’s coming. It has been nearly twenty years but she never passes up an opportunity to bring up the scandal at St Olaf’s and her part in rescuing him. He braces himself. ‘…that you let yourself down so badly. If I hadn’t…’

‘I know, Mother, but I do wonder why you need to be such a broken record about it.’ The instant the words leave his mouth he regrets them. Why does he always take the bait? He watches as Amanda’s face stiffens into a gorgon mask and waits for the retaliation he knows is about to come.

‘Speak to me that way again, this “broken record” will break you. Don’t think I won’t.’ The words ‘broken record’ come out crackling with venom.

One day, Mother, he thinks, I am going to kill you.

Chapter 13

Honor