‘I wasn’t leaning on anybody, not with this. I think Fletcher and certain others felt a responsibility towards Dominic, hence their intercessions. There was certainly plenty of guilt to go round. It was my fault Dominic was off the rails, though. It wasn’t an easy burden to carry sometimes. You say it won’t matter that he’s not your own blood, and it doesn’t, it really doesn’t, but when you’re under stress, you can think unworthy thoughts. There was often tension between us, and I’d vacillate between riding him hard and overindulging him out of guilt.

‘You might think there’s a certain irony in that he took measures to distance himself from me, publicly rejecting me, in fact. Maybe there is, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. We’ve actually been getting on much better these past couple of years, since his mother … since Wilma died. I think he’d also come to realise that this game isn’t as morally simple as he used to believe.’

‘Why didn’t the police just leave the baby on a doorstep, or at the hospital?’ Jasmine asked.

‘Because it would have been investigated,’ Catherine replied. ‘Connections would have been made. Stephen Ramsay’s parents would probably have been able to identify the child. This way, Charlie Ramsay effectively disappeared from history.’

‘Until now,’ Jasmine stated, causing Wilson to visibly wince. ‘Until my uncle found out the truth. What happened to him?’

‘I thought I had dodged a bullet,’ Wilson said. ‘I saw the piece in the paper a couple of weeks back, about Anne Ramsay hiring a detective. Not long after that, this Jim Sharp bloke called up and asked if he could come in for a chat. I knew what it was about, and naturally I feared the worst. I called Fletcher to let him know. He told me it would be okay: that this detective was an ex-cop and he would have a word, straighten it out. I assumed he had, as I never heard from Sharp again.’

‘Neither did we,’ said Jasmine darkly.

Old School

‘Can we trust Wilson not to go and act on this?’Jasmine asked anxiously. ‘He could be making phone calls right now.’

They had adjourned to a nearby bar and restaurant on St Vincent Street where Abercorn had advised they could get a private room. Jasmine had gone there once for lunch, celebrating the end of term. She’d spent far more than she could afford because they were divvying up the bill, and Charlotte Queen had been in the group. Jasmine would have been happy with a bowl of pasta and a pear cider, but Charlotte had been ordering oysters and champagne, forgetting that not everybody’s daddy was a millionaire; and that not everybody even had a daddy.