She had seen the boy grow into his father’s face.

She had seen him win a place at a school on the other side of the world.

She had understood, with the animal cunning of a person who has built her whole comfort on someone else’s stolen inheritance, that a Santiago who reached his eighteenth birthday free and clear was a Santiago who might one day ask where his mother’s money had gone — and find out.

She could not allow the question to ever be asked.