Hugh smiled delightedly and puffed out his chest. He had no idea that he was being mocked, but Matt and Diana were clearly on the same wavelength. Matt had to shove a large forkful of cottage pie into his mouth to stop himself from smirking.

“What are you studying, Diana?” Helen asked, hoping to take control.

“Fine art.”

“She draws the most amazing pencil sketches and portraits,” Matt said with pride.

“You’re not a stranger to the creative process yourself, I believe, Mrs Whitmore,” Diana said to Helen. “Matt tells me you are behind the Portia Deane novels.”

Helen was taken aback that Matt had told her anything about her at all. She wouldn’t have thought his stepmother was one of his chosen topics of conversation. “Yes, well, they are not literary in any way, but I love writing them – and call me Helen,” she replied, awkwardly remembering their conversation in the bookshop.

“Is that why you write under a pseudonym? Because they are so… erotic?” As Diana said the word, she bit her bottom lip. Hugh coughed uncomfortably and Helen shuffled in her chair and swallowed the cottage pie, which felt like mud in her mouth, cloying and stodgy.

“I don’t know if I would call them erotic. Scandalous maybe. No, I… er… I value my privacy, that’s all. I didn’t expect the books to be as successful as they have been over the years and I don’t like attracting undue attention to myself.”

“Why’s that then? Too many secrets in your closet that you don’t want exposed?” Was she mocking Helen now? If so, no one else seemed to have noticed. Hugh was pointedly focusing on his plate. Lydia was talking quietly to him, something about a test she had had at school today, but his eyes kept flicking over to Diana while Lydia talked. Mills was ploughing through her dinner, her leg still up on her chair.

Helen ignored Diana’s question and said, just to hear her own voice more than anything else, “Mills, can you sit properly please?”

Mills glared at her in return and dropped her leg dramatically.

Helen hardly touched her dinner. Her appetite had fled for the hills, along with any sense of humour she may have had when they all sat down. She felt uncomfortable, annoyed at this brazen girl sitting next to her, who was now speaking in quiet tones to Matt, touching his hand intermittently as they chatted.