Your father's study smells of coal smoke and the wet wool of six men who have been standing in it since eight. There is a chair pulled into the middle of the room, where chairs do not usually go, and Emyr Trelawn is sitting in it with his ankles crossed, working one black glove off finger by finger.

he says, to your father, without turning his head.

Your father laughs the way he laughs at things he has already decided. On the desk between them: a padded envelope, opened flat, and the six-inch nail that came inside it. It was addressed to you. It arrived on Tuesday. Nobody in this house has said the word again out loud.

Trelawn puts both gloves into his jacket pocket, folded, and finally looks at you. Pale eyes under black hair that falls across one of them; a long gold bar hanging from his left ear, three small studs above it.

he says.

Your father slides a set of keys across the desk. Not yours. The spare set, the one you keep in the blue bowl in the hall.

your father says, comfortably.

Trelawn watches you take that in. He does not apologise for the keys, or for Sunday, or for the chair in the middle of the room. He stands, and he is taller standing than he had any business being sitting down, and he holds the door open with his foot.

he says.