Lydia shrugged. “I’ve heard you were a bit wild.” Her voice was timid. Helen couldn’t recall ever hearing her raise it above a whisper. Even when she was squabbling with her brother, it was done on mute. Helen often found herself asking Lydia to repeat things, knowing she had spoken but not registering what she had said. She was white noise. Helen wished she would burst out with a stream of screamed expletives, just so that she knew there was a personality in there somewhere. Lydia could be beautiful one day, but as a fourteen-year-old she was still very much an awkward child, her head full of Disney naivety and unicorns.

“Heard from who?”

Matt’s knife scraped across the plate, the noise making Helen’s teeth clench.

Lydia didn’t answer. Her fork weaved through the gravy, leaving track lines.

“Ah, well, that’s where I came in,” Hugh said from the other end of the ridiculously long table. “She may have been a little rambunctious, let’s say, but then I caught her in my trap and tamed her.”

Matt made a low gagging noise. “I’m done,” he said and pushed back in his chair. Another high-pitched squeal across the parquet floor, sending Helen’s teeth on edge again.

“Matt, you’ll wait until we’re all finished, thank you very much,” Hugh said with practised patience. He pushed his glasses further up his nose.

Matt sighed dramatically, but remained seated, arms folded, and began to rock back in his chair. Helen found herself hoping the legs would flip out from underneath him. She hid a small smile in her napkin and picked up her fork again, but her appetite for the dinner in front of her had vanished. She pushed some broccoli around the plate, then put her cutlery together and nudged her plate away.

“Not hungry, darling?” Hugh said. “I guess it does need a bit more seasoning, doesn’t it? And the Yorkshire puddings were a bit flat.”

Her hand twitched in readiness to throw her plate of roast dinner at him. She smiled thinly. “Just tired tonight, a bit of a headache. Early night for me, I think.”

“Yeah, she was a real party animal,” Amelia said with a smirk across the table.

Amelia was Helen’s biological daughter, although she preferred to be called Mills. Fiercely independent and intimidatingly intelligent, a firecracker of a seventeen-year-old. The result of Helen’s former life. For many years it was just the two of them.

“Hey you, you’re supposed to be on my side,” Helen said.

“Now, now, there are no sides in this family. We’re all on the same team,” Hugh said and Helen could see how much it strained Mills not to roll her eyes.

It took self-restraint for Helen, too.

*