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could see that the Phelans aren’t the best risk in the world.” She got up. “I’ve got to go, I’m afraid. But as far as I’m concerned the question of whether or not we want them as neighbors simply doesn’t arise. There’s nothing we can do. You can’t choose your neighbors. The only conceivable thing you could do would be to club together and buy it yourselves. But then you’d be on dodgy ground when you came to selling it again if you tried to stop the Phelans buying it.” She smiled around, giving them the aggravating impression that she regarded them as comic. “So you’d best resign yourselves to your own impotence.”
    There was general relief when she had gone.
    â€œIt seems to me your good lady is thinking too negatively,” said Lynn to Steven, who sat there sweating and embarrassed, but thankful Evie had not heard herself described as his good lady.
    â€œThe suggestion about clubbing together is the only practical suggestion we’ve had so far,” pointed out Daphne Bridewell, who had also registered and not relished Lynn’s phrase. “Though as a retired person I wouldn’t be in a position to come in on it. Neither, I imagine, would Mr. Cartwright. Banks and building societies don’t rush to give loans to elderly people.”
    Algy Cartwright nodded. Adrian Eastlake looked round in despair. That left three householders. Where would he lay hands on thirty-odd thousand?
    â€œThere’s also the question of the police,” said Lynn, looking down at his notes. “From what I hear he’s the sort of man who must have a record.”
    â€œI remember some trouble with the police while I was Deputy Head at the school,” confirmed Daphne Bridewell.
    â€œI can’t say too much,” said Adrian Eastlake, looking around at them pinkly, “because of my job, you understand. But when I had to call on him, I did some . . . background research, and he does have a criminal record. Though of a minor kind,” he concluded lamely.
    So what? Jennifer Packard wanted to say. What was there to stop criminals buying houses? It was one of the things they most frequently used their gains for, and no wonder, the way house prices were soaring. But she had stored up enough black marks that evening already, marks which would be brought up against her when everyone had gone, so she held her peace. She sat there wondering what they would have done if not the Phelans but an ordinary family from the Belfield Grove Estate had won the pools and decided to buy The Hollies. Nothing, she supposed. Lynn would have wanted to, though. Yet he himself had grown up in a back-to-back, with nothing tospur him on but an ambitious and doting mother and his own rather brutal sense of priorities.
    The talk was now turning general. Frustration at not being able to think up specific measures, combined with Evie’s insistence on naming the Phelans, had led them to home in on the family’s personal and collective awfulness.
    â€œThe eldest boy was always a troublemaker,” Daphne Bridewell was saying. “In fact, he was a delinquent by the time he came to us, and that was when he was nine.”
    â€œYou may remember the newspaper stories about child prostitution in the Carrock area of town,” said Adrian. “I happen to know that the eldest daughter was heavily involved there—she was only thirteen at the time.”
    â€œHow many children are there?” asked Lynn Packard.
    â€œSix,” said Daphne Bridewell promptly.
    â€œCatholics, I suppose,” said Lynn, with a moue.
    â€œChrist, it’s not religion makes them have all those kids,” said Steven too loudly. “It’s to scrounge more out of the Social Security.”
    He pulled himself up short, appalled. He sounded like a Thatcherite. He thanked his stars once more that Evie had gone early. But Daphne Bridewell was