Ben had already picked up Lexi when Anna got back to her flat. She was met by a fur-covered bundle of exuberant joy as soon as she let herself in. Anna fell to her knees to hug the dog. Ben watched, leaning against the door frame, arms folded, a smile playing over his lips.

‘You know something, you’re lucky I’m not the jealous type…’

Anna sent him a disbelieving glare. ‘We both know you got exactly the same treatment when you picked her up.’

Ben grinned. Anna stood and kissed him earnestly on the cheek. ‘Thanks for doing this. I hope it won’t be too much of an ordeal.’

‘It won’t be so shut up and go get changed out of your cop gear. You have the delightful aroma of stale police car about you.’

‘I’ll ignore that because I know deep down you don’t mean it because you are a really nice man.’

‘You’ve already said that once so please stop. You’re ruining my reputation. Now why don’t I take Lexi here out for a comfort break while you smarten yourself up.’

Anna squinted her eyes but didn’t argue.

---

Anna’s sister Kate lived in a nice new detached property a few miles north of Cardiff with her husband Rob and two children. A year and a bit younger, Kate was the exuberant extrovert to Anna’s controlled coolness. She’d married a local boy who’d coped effortlessly with Kate’s wild partying during their courtship. And even now, with two children and a mortgage to contend with, Kate still knew how to have a good time. Something Anna had struggled with for what seemed like forever.

Traffic over the Second Severn Crossing was busy with commuters heading back from Bristol towards the marginally cheaper housing on the Welsh side of the river. By six they’d arrived at the new stone farmhouse guarded with wrought-iron gates, today adorned with balloons. The front door was similarly decorated as were the hallway, stairs and almost everywhere else Anna cared to look. Birthday boy Harry had that slightly glazed expression that overtired children shared with Saturday-night drunks, while his little sister Elin, her party dress smeared with a variety of lurid foodstuffs, ran after her brother wherever he went, hooting like a train. They both ignored Anna and made beelines for Lexi, who seemed delighted with all the attention as her lead was grabbed and the children led her outside.

‘They do love you really. It’s just that you aren’t furry enough and don’t have a tail.’ Kate, dressed in jeans tempered by heels and a flouncy top, grinned at Anna as she walked right past her to hug Ben before embracing her sister. Through the French doors, Anna watched Lexi fetching a ball, much to the delight of Harry and Elin, who were jumping up and down in excitement on the lit deck adjacent to the garden.

‘Shouldn’t they be wearing coats?’ Anna asked.

‘I’ve sent Rob’s mum and dad on that mission,’ Kate said. ‘And, should they wish to accept it, best of luck to them since the kids are in super-fuelled “no to everything” mood.’

Outside, Rob’s parents appeared and desperately tried to get outerwear on to the children. Two fit sixty-year-olds, smartly dressed and always upbeat as befitted the comfortable retirement they were enjoying after years of building up the haulage company Rob now ran.

Anna waved and got smiles and gestures of good-natured frustration in return.

‘Mum?’ Anna sent Kate a questioning glance.

‘Kitchen, washing up.’

‘What a surprise.’ Anna composed an over-bright smile, grabbed Ben’s arm and said, ‘Come on, come and say hello.’

Sian Gwynne wore a sparkly top and dark trousers – all, Anna surmised, picked out by Kate. But the shoes that might have completed the birthday outfit had been abandoned in favour of polka-dot house slippers.

‘Hi, Mum,’ Anna called out.

‘So, you’ve turned up then,’ Sian said without turning around.

Anna, still smiling, gave her sister a pointed look.

‘Evening, Mrs Gwynne,’ Ben said.

This caused Sian to freeze mid-scrub. She turned quickly and, with majestic disregard for her carping remark of earlier, smiled warmly. ‘Ben, how nice to see you.’

Ben walked across and embraced her.

‘Mum, there’s no need to do this now,’ Kate said.

‘Don’t be silly. You’ll have your hands full once the children stop playing with that dog. And someone better wipe its paws before it comes back in.’

‘“It” is called Lexi,’ Anna said.

Sian shook her head. ‘Harry’s already overexcited.’

‘We do have a dishwasher, Mum,’ Kate said.

‘Ruins the glasses.’

Kate gave up with a little sigh of exasperation. Sian Gwynne was a woman with unshakable belief in doing things her way. It frustrated Kate, but it drove Anna to distraction. And there was no doubt she was getting worse with age. A widow for more than a decade, her grandchildren were now Sian’s raison d'être. The children loved her but her inability to treat neither Anna nor Kate as adults was a source of some amusement between the sisters. Anna usually let the slings and arrows bounce off her armour, but Kate found the jousting increasingly difficult to handle.

‘She’s losing her filters,’ was becoming Kate’s favourite phrase. Anna was less ready to accept her mother’s cattiness as a sign of anything other than her disdain for Anna’s lifestyle. Something Sian made no bones about criticising whenever the opportunity arose.

‘Busy at work, were you?’ Sian asked, directing her question at Anna.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’

‘Something horrible?’ Kate asked, her face lighting up with Schadenfreude.

Anna shook her head. ‘Horrible enough. Some bodies found near a railway line next to a secure unit.’

‘What’s a secure unit?’ Sian asked.

Ben answered. ‘They used to call them mental hospitals. Or before that, asylums. Where they house the criminally insane.’

Sian frowned and stared at Ben as if he’d uttered some sort of curse before turning her horrified gaze on Anna. ‘I hope you’re not going near a place like that?’

‘Erm, of course I am. I was there today. Their security is ten times more thorough than any airport—’

‘You need to stay away from those places,’ Sian said in a harsh whisper.

‘What?’

‘Mum, are you OK?’ Kate stepped forward as Sian leaned on the sink and put her hand out to steady herself. But she shrugged off Kate’s supporting arm and kept her gaze on Anna, shaking her head.

‘I used to visit my aunty Mary in a place just like that. In Talgarth.’ The word came out like a curse. Sian shook her head, her face suddenly pale. ‘It terrified me. She terrified me. Sitting there, hunched over, like a shell of a real person. Like who she really was had all been sucked out of her.’

‘You don’t need to tell me, Mum,’ Anna said, with a shrill giggle. ‘You made me go with you, remember?’

‘Talgarth?’ Kate asked.

Sian squeezed her eyes shut. ‘A terrible place. I hated going there.’ She looked up, her eyes boring into Anna’s. ‘When you were small I was worried you might end up there, you know that?’

Anna knew her mouth was open. She forced it shut.

‘You were so different from your sister. Your father said I was being stupid, but he hadn’t seen Mary. We never talked about her. They just let her rot away.’

‘Mum,’ Kate said with urgent chastisement in her whispered tone, but she held up an open hand in appeasement towards Anna before taking her mother’s arm. ‘Leave the washing-up now. Let’s go and sit down. And no more wine for now either.’

Ben leaned in and whispered to Anna, ‘Go and see Lexi and the kids,’ before following Kate through to a sitting room beyond.

Anna stood, rooted to the spot, wondering what had just happened and trying to work out how, in the space of two minutes, her mother had managed to both ruin the mood and throw another grenade into their family dynamics. She walked out into the hallway as Rob, her brother-in-law, came through the front door carrying a case of beers. He put them down and kissed Anna on both cheeks. Rob was big and burly with an easy-going temperament.

‘Got a drink, Anna?’ he asked when he’d given her a hug.

‘Maybe later,’ Anna said.

‘What are you doing in here on your own?’

Being odd, I expect. The retort flashed into her mind, but she held it back. Rob wasn’t her mother.

Instead, Anna pointed to the French doors. ‘Watching your children freeze to death and waiting for social services to arrive.’

Rob nodded, grinning. ‘Your fault for bringing that bloody dog.’ But his eyes never left Anna’s face. ‘You OK? You look… distracted.’

‘Do I?’ She had a choice then. Burden Rob with a little bit of Gwynne baggage, or lie. She opted for the lie. ‘Work, you know.’

‘Hmm.’ Rob wasn’t buying it. ‘Ben here?’

‘Yes, he’s talking to Mum.’

‘And you aren’t?’

‘Dog comes first,’ Anna said, letting Rob have her best jokey smile.

She was saved from more awkwardness by the French doors opening and Lexi bounding in with a tennis ball in her mouth and two squealing children in hot pursuit.

Anna took the ball from the dog. ‘Right, you two. We have presents,’ she said.

The next hour and a half were spent in convivial chaos with the children getting more and more tired while the adults tried to placate them with games and stories. By seven thirty, Elin had fallen asleep on the sofa, and birthday boy Harry, in Rob’s father’s arms, lay listening to a story, his lids getting heavier by the paragraph. Rob’s mother carried Elin to bed, and his father took a surprisingly docile Harry up with the promise of another chapter as long as he got into his pyjamas.

Kate, Rob and Anna sat in the living room. Ben and Sian were in the kitchen, sitting around the table.

‘Shall we go through and join them?’ Kate said, smiling, waiting for Anna to say the obvious. But Anna didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be in the same room as her mother if she could help it. The barb that had been delivered a couple of hours before was still smarting. She was fed up of being a target. Fed up of being the patsy. Anna knew that Kate and Rob were looking at her, their expressions ones of anxious entreaty.

She was saved from continuing the embarrassing silence by Ben appearing in the doorway.

‘Kate, your mum says she wants to go home. She’s feeling a bit tired.’

Kate got up and headed for the kitchen, concern making her pout. Anna could hear their voices. Kate questioning, her mother’s reassurances. Two minutes later Sian was in the hall and Anna went to say goodbye. Sian was all smiles.

‘Lovely party. Harry must be exhausted. Thanks for the food and thank you for the chat, Ben.’ She turned to Anna, her smile genuine. ‘Lovely to see you, Anna. Don’t work too hard, now. Is it Rob who’s taking me home?’

‘Yes, me again, I’m afraid.’

‘Are you OK to drive?’

‘Yes, I’m on the pretend beer. Low-alcohol stuff.’

Sian kissed Kate and then Anna and followed Rob out to his car. When she’d gone, Kate turned to Ben. ‘Are you some kind of witch whisperer?’

Ben shook his head. ‘Comportment.’

Kate frowned but then waved to her mother as the car drove out. When it had gone she shut the door and turned back to Ben. ‘Say that again.’

‘Let’s go into the kitchen.’ He turned away.

Kate threw Anna a glance, but all she could do was shrug.

Ben sat at the table. ‘Comportment. It’s a psychological term that applies to the appropriateness of certain behaviours in a given situation. I’ve had a long chat with your mum. I think she’s comportment-challenged.’

‘I could have told you that,’ Anna said.

Ben nodded. ‘I know. And I’m not trying to excuse it, but I don’t think she has any insight either.’ He looked at Kate. ‘She is losing her filters, as you put it. It’s like having a hair-trigger for anything that irritates her.’

‘Why are you telling us things we already know?’ Anna said.

‘Because it can be a sign of something. How about her personality? Has that changed?’

Kate sighed. ‘She has been getting a little tetchy lately. With me not the kids.’

Ben nodded.

‘Come on, Ben, spit it out,’ Anna said. ‘You think she’s losing it?’

‘One way of putting it. Early-onset dementia can present like this.’

‘Oh, come on. She more or less called me a lunatic. It’s obvious she thinks I’m disturbed.’

Kate put her hand on Anna’s arm. ‘It wasn’t a very nice thing to say, I have to admit.’

‘Agreed.’ Ben nodded. ‘As I say, I’m not making excuses. I’m just suggesting there may be a reason why.’

‘I’m the reason why,’ Anna said.

‘Don’t say that,’ Kate said.

Anna sighed. ‘I know. It’s all very well for me, I’ll be swanning off and leaving you with the mess.’

‘But she isn’t a mess. Most of the time. She’s great with the kids.’

‘You’re still happy to let her babysit?’

‘Couple of hours in the daytime. She’s fine… It’s…’

‘What?’ Anna said.

‘She’s worse when you’re around.’

‘Thanks, Kate.’

‘Anna, I know it’s not your fault.’

Kate was right. Anna was her mother’s kryptonite. But knowing it didn’t help Anna’s sour indictment. ‘I can’t believe that all these years she’s been worried I might go off the rails.’

It seemed an open invitation for someone to make a flippant remark, defuse the tension, but neither Ben nor Kate did because it was so obviously true. Somehow it made things worse.

‘Don’t hate her, Anna,’ Kate said.

‘I’m trying not to,’ was all Anna managed to say in reply.