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Alex shrank back against the window, afraid of his father’s anger.

He’d endured three post-expulsion interviews in Noah’s study at The Orchard in the past. Noah had sighed, sternly told him how disappointed he was, and extracted Alex’s promises to do better in future – but Alex had never seen him this furious before.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just scared of them.

” He jerked his head at the window. He didn’t say it, because he didn’t want to upset his brother, but the crowd had jeered at him when he pushed his way through to visit.

They’d called him names, hating him for what had happened to Charles, their shining golden boy.

Noah was right – Charles was a national hero.

What did that make him? The national villain?

He was seventeen years old, he’d just lost his mother, his brother was likely to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, and his father hated him. He felt so alone.

“There’s a way out via the staff accommodation,” the nurse said. “I’m sure we could smuggle you out through there, so you don’t have to face them.”

“Really?” Alex brightened. “I’d like that. Where is it?”

“I can show you.”

“No.” His father put a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Lyttons don’t skulk in the shadows. Alex will go out there and face the press, and he’ll stand tall while he does it. He made a mistake, and he’ll take responsibility for that mistake and accept all that comes with it. Won’t you, Alex?”

Alex glanced at his father glumly. Was this the way back into his father’s heart? If he went out there and faced that baying mob, day in, day out, would his father’s look of disgust finally turn into one of pride – or at least acceptance?

“Okay,” he muttered, biting back a sullen retort. He didn’t want to run the gauntlet of an angry crowd ever again. He didn’t want to have to win back his father’s love. He wanted it to be his again, for free, the way it used to be.

Noah turned back to Charles, smiling at him lovingly. Alex felt a jealous knot form in his belly. When the nurse touched his arm and jerked her head, he followed her out of the room.

“I’ll show you anyway – in case you change your mind,” she said, with a pitying look. “It’s down here.”

She led him along a corridor and down a couple of flights of stairs to a doorway.

“Go through there – you need a biokey to open it, but people come and go all the time so just tag along with someone passing through. Walk through the block – it has a side exit into the grounds, and nobody is likely to see you. You can come in the same way in the morning, as well.”

“Thank you,” he said in a heartfelt tone.

She smiled and patted his arm. “I’ve got a son around your age – I know you look all grown up, but you’re still a kid inside – and your mum just died.

It’s vile what the press are doing to you.

I know how much you must be missing her, but you’ve been in to visit your brother every day.

Something bad happened to you, but that doesn’t make you a bad person, Alex. ”

He lowered his head, blinking rapidly. She patted his arm again and then left.

He didn’t use her escape route. He steeled himself every day to step out of the hospital’s main entrance in front of the mob and take it on the chin.

He was jeered and taunted each morning when he arrived, and each evening when he left, but he held his head high and took it. He was a Lytton, after all.

Alex made his way to the staff accommodation unit and hung around outside until a gaggle of people arrived at the door. He tagged along behind them as they entered and then jogged down a hallway and through another door to the main body of the hospital.

He had no idea which room his father was in, so he went to the hospital shop and bought the biggest bunch of flowers he could find. Then he went to the nearest ward.

“Flowers for Noah Lytton,” he said, hiding his face behind them.

“He’s not on this ward. You need the Prince Louis Ward on the second floor,” a nurse told him, barely looking up.

He used the empty stairwell to reach the second floor, rather than the busy lift. He knew this hospital like the back of his hand. Charles had been here for months, and he’d spent every day with him, bringing in his schoolwork so he could sit at the foot of Charles’s bed and study.

He paused on the stairs and glanced out of the window to see another black SUAV slowly patrolling the hospital grounds below. Tyler’s men would be difficult to evade, but he’d come this far. If he could stay one step ahead, he might get away with this.

He made it to the second floor and along the hallway to the nurse’s station.

“Delivery of flowers for Noah Lytton,” he told the nurse on duty.

“I’ll take them,” she said brusquely. He reluctantly relinquished them, but stayed to watch her taking them into a room further along the hallway with the number 14 on the door.

Ducking into a nearby toilet, he waited a few minutes, and then slipped out again.

The nurse he’d given the flowers to was talking to someone, and it was easy enough to walk past her without being seen.

He paused outside room fourteen for a second, looking around, then opened the door and stepped inside.

He saw his father lying in a bed, and the flowers he’d delivered in a big plastic jug on a nearby table.

He tiptoed over, his heart skipping a beat as he looked down at his father’s grey, haggard face.

Noah’s eyes were closed; he hadn’t yet regained consciousness.

He didn’t look like the man Alex had grown up with, or even like the man he’d seen a few weeks ago at Lytton AV.

He looked shrunken, frail, and greatly diminished.

There was a cannula in his hand, attached to an IV line.

Alex sat down on the bed and took hold of Noah’s hand.

“Hi, Dad – it’s Alex,” he whispered, squeezing gently.

His father didn’t respond. “I’m so sorry you’re ill,” he continued.

“I wanted to come and visit you, to say, um… well, that I love you. I’m not sure it’s what you want to hear, but I had to tell you in case I don’t get a chance again. ”

He blinked a few times, and then continued.

“I know I fucked up, and I’m sorrier than you can ever know.

I’m not going to ask you to forgive me – I can’t forgive myself, so I’m not asking you to try.

I just wanted you to know that I love you.

I’ve always loved you, even when I was being a shit, and getting expelled, and causing trouble for you.

I think maybe that was the problem.” He paused, struggling to understand his complex relationship with this man lying on the bed.

“Mum and Charles had each other, so you and I were sort of landed with each other, weren’t we?

I think you felt as left out as I did, although you handled it better.

” He gave a wry smile. “I wanted to be part of their gang, doing the big, important thing – going to regattas, winning medals, getting all that kudos – but I wasn’t part of their club, and neither were you.

I’m sorry I didn’t try to connect with you more, instead of making your life difficult.

Honestly, I think all I ever really wanted was your attention – any attention – however negative.

” He stroked his father’s hand with his thumb.

The blinds were drawn and the room dim, giving it an air of the confessional, making it easier to talk. He tuned in to the hypnotic sound of his father’s breathing, watching his chest rise and fall.

“You were right about George Tyler,” he said, with a bitter laugh.

“He’s evil. He made me show you those images – I didn’t want to do it.

I didn’t know about him and Mum until it was too late.

I don’t know what she was thinking, falling for a man like that, but he can be so very charming when he wants something.

I was sucked in, so I suppose I can understand why she was, too. ”

Noah’s breathing didn’t falter. His chest still rose and fell slowly, sonorously.

“I’m sorry if I’m the reason you’re here,” Alex told him, still stroking his hand gently.

“If I could go back and do things differently, then I would. I know I was a shit when I worked at Lytton AV, but I wanted you to see me again, really see me, the way you did when I was a kid. After the accident, you stopped seeing who I was – I just became a walking disappointment. I understand why you felt that way, but you don’t know how much it hurt.

I was a pain in the arse – I know that. I thought that if I could prove myself at work and show you how good I was, then you’d love me again, but I went about it the wrong way.

You made me do all those other things instead of designing, but I couldn’t make you proud of me, because I wasn’t good at any of that stuff. ”

He raised his father’s hand to his lips and kissed it.

“You’re a good man, Dad. You deserved better.

We were happy once – I’m not sure where it all went wrong.

Maybe after Granddad fell ill, and you had to take over the business.

You were so short-tempered with us all after that.

I don’t think you even like Lytton AV, really.

I think it’s been this bloody awful albatross around your neck.

You’d probably have been happier doing something else.

It was this gigantic birthright you inherited, but I don’t think it was you, really. ”

He paused, suddenly seeing their entire family dynamic clearly.