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helped steady her mother, who accepted the support momentarily and then brushed me off like a troublesome fly.
    ‘Who’s this, then,
Mummy?
Nice!’
    Give her her due, Angela was up to the job. She stepped forward, landed a heavy slap on the girl’s face, shoved her back inside the room and pulled the door shut. She wasn’t even breathing hard. She’d be good on the steps. Maybe she had made the hockey team.
    ‘You hypocritical bitch!’ the girl screamed.
    Ronny was sucking in air and pressing himself back against the wall, trying to slide upright.
    ‘You,’ Angela said, completely under control now and nudging Ronny with her foot. ‘Get out!’
    He scrambled up, all legs and arms in jeans, sneakers and bomber jacket, and rushed to the door. His fly zipper was still undone. Rock music came from inside the room.
    ‘Well,’ Ms Pettigrew said, ‘after all that I don’t suppose there’s any use pretending we’re a happy family.’
    ‘Not many are all the time.’
    ‘I suppose not. She looked at her watch and tapped the side of her head with an index finger. ‘Oh, I’ve got it now—I told her I’d be away having the car seen to until late, but as it turned out I had to have it towed. I forgot to tell her about my appointment with you. I have to admit I was going to cancel it in favour of dealing with the car, until it wouldn’t start and it became clear from the NRMA personthat it was undriveable and so I’d still be here to see you. She . . . they obviously thought I wasn’t here. I must say you were quick and . . . decisive.’
    So were you
, I thought, but I didn’t say it. ‘He was just a boy, no experience.’
    On the way back to the sunroom she stopped in the kitchen, swivelled, and headed towards a drinks tray on a pine sideboard. ‘I’m going to have a whisky. Would you care for one, Mr Hardy?’
    ‘I would. Thank you.’
    ‘Ice?’
    ‘Just water.’
    ‘Quite right.’ She poured two solid belts of Cutty Sark, added water from a cooler and took the drinks through to where we’d been sitting.
    ‘Cheers, and thank you for your help. That big lump of a boy could have hurt me.’
    ‘He was more frightened than anything else, but he did need discouraging.’
    She smiled. ‘You do have a nice way of putting things. Sarah is an uncontrolled and uncontrollable little hoyden. I don’t know what I’m going to do with her. She’s been on the brink of expulsion from St Margaret’s many a time.’
    ‘Unlike Justin.’
    ‘My word, yes. He was an exemplary . . . oh God.’ She took a strong pull on her drink and stroked the side of her face with her free hand. ‘I must have sounded so cold before. It’s the way I was brought up. Don’t show your feelings, remain in control. I do, but sometimes I want to scream.’
    I drank some scotch and gave her a minute, then I said, ‘You’ve got a lot on your hands. I’ll only ask one questionand then I’d like to see anything of Justin’s you can show me. What did you mean when you said his disappearance was your husband’s fault?’
    She knocked back the rest of her drink. ‘Paul had always gone on about the military tradition of the Hampshires—the Boer War, World Wars I and II and all that, plus his own service in Vietnam. He filled Justin to the brim with the idea of Duntroon and the military. Justin and I had an argument about something or other and I told him that Paul had served briefly as a supply officer in Vietnam before being invalided out. He never fired a shot in anger or had one fired at him, never left the base. This was after Paul had deserted us, making noises about American business deals, promising to look into scholarships to West Point.’
    ‘So Justin . . . ?’
    ‘I’m guessing. He and I never spoke about . . . personal matters, not really, not manly—you know? I’m guessing he went off to do something brave, unlike his father, to prove to him and himself that he was a man. God knows what, and he hasn’t