In the three months since Charles’s death, it would be fair to say that Hector had been unbearable. To begin with, Grace had assumed that her son’s bad-tempered rudeness was just a symptom of his grief. Where Clio had been tearful and a little lost at Charles’s unexpected demise, Hector had been angry, as if his father had somehow cheated him out of something by dying so unexpectedly. That was the way with an aneurysm, or so said the very young and exhausted-looking doctor who came to inform them that unfortunately they had been unable to resuscitate Charles. Charles had gone to bed in the afternoon with a migraine and never woken up. By the time Grace went in to check on him at dinnertime, his greying complexion suggested that it was already too late to save him, but she had called an ambulance and the paramedics had tried to revive him all the way to the hospital. But it was to no avail. Charles had left this world with the kind of high drama with which he lived in it.

Clio seemed to be dealing with her grief better than her brother, having had an intense but brief period of deep mourning that quickly slipped into a more general malaise. This had also passed quickly, and now she was apparently researching university courses despite being more than ten years older than the average student. It was almost as if her father’s death had released something in her that had hitherto been trapped.

Grace had taken her husband’s death with the stoicism that she applied to everything. It had been fifteen years since he had left Melissa and returned to her, and in that time she had got used to living with his betrayal. Sometimes weeks would go by without her thinking about it at all and, despite it all, Grace still loved him. She couldn’t help herself. He was still her Charles, impetuous and fun-seeking, never really taking life too much to heart. She hadn’t told him that she knew about his other life. Speaking out would only disturb the status quo and that was a dangerous game with very high stakes; not one that she was prepared to play. In his turn Charles had never mentioned anything that had happened in Whitley Bay, steadfastly avoiding all subjects that might trip him up, and reversing elegantly out of any blind alleys that he inadvertently turned into. He really was very good at covering his tracks, Grace had come to realise, and she could almost admire the skill with which he had managed to keep his two lives separate. Despite all this, however, her grief at her husband’s death had been profound and deeply painful, but she had marched bravely on, trying to keep things at the Hall as normal as possible. Business as usual: that was the way.