Before I could follow the thought to its end, Celina herself came hurrying down the corridor with her sister Alice a step behind her.

My mother-in-law did not so much as glance at me.

She went straight to her son, and seized his arm, and cried, “My poor boy!

Oh, my poor boy, are you all right?” — as though he were the one who had been harmed, as though the tragedy were something that had been done to Luke rather than something a child had suffered.

And then she turned on me.

“This is your fault,” she snapped, her voice rising.