‘Ray is a few years older than me,’ Charles went on. ‘We barely saw each other growing up. When his mother and my father split up, he went to live with his mother and that was that. I knew that I had a half-brother because Dad used to talk about him from time to time, but I never saw much of him. Dad reckoned that Ray’s mother kept him away from us as a way of punishing Dad. I don’t know. Anyway, he came to stay a couple of times in the holidays when I was little, but by the time I was ten he’d stopped coming. After that he played no part in my life and I just forgot about him. So you see, it wasn’t a total lie to not tell you about him, Gracie. I just never thought about it.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Grace. ‘I’m not cross. I can see how you might not have mentioned him. What I don’t understand is why we appear to have bought a house in Whitley Bay.’

Charles nodded. ‘I was just coming to that,’ he said. ‘So, Ray got caught up in a bit of bother.’ He ran his hand through his thick hair, which fell back into place obediently as soon as he stopped touching it.

‘What sort of bother?’ asked Grace, narrowing her eyes.

‘The sort that gets you sent to prison,’ Charles replied solemnly.

Grace started. She couldn’t help herself. She had never known anyone who had even been arrested, let alone gone to prison. The idea was horrifying, but also tantalisingly intoxicating, a peep into a world that she had only ever seen on the television.

‘What did he do?’ she asked tentatively.

Please don’t let it be anything violent, she said to herself, thinking of her children. Then again, part of her wanted it to be something so bad that she could use it to shock all the hideous hangers-on that being Lady Hartsford attracted. ‘Oh, you’ve met my husband, Charles, have you? His half-brother went to prison for murder, you know.’ She could just see the expressions on their prissy faces.

‘He robbed a building society,’ said Charles, and Grace felt that inappropriate thrill again. That was better than murder. It was bad enough to be intriguing, and they probably didn’t need the scandal of a murderer in the family, not really.

‘Badly,’ Charles continued, raising an eyebrow as if this was now a hilarious anecdote that he was recounting rather than a serious part of his own family history. ‘He was part of a gang, but it turned out they were totally incompetent. The plan went wrong and they all got caught. Plus they all had previous.’