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not?’
    â€˜Don’t snap at
me
! If I’d taken every stitch of advice I was offered, I’d be in a madhouse.’
    He said, in as conciliatory a fashion as he could manage, ‘Sick of the mess?’
    â€˜Sick? Those men of his tore through this house like a bagful of cats tipped down a mousehole. I’m not going to let the clumsy tykes loose on the garden. I’d be left standing on a blasted heath.’
    â€˜Nonsense,’ he reassured her. ‘These days they can track cables underground.’
    â€˜I don’t know whose side you’re on.’
    â€˜I’m on yours.’
    â€˜Well, it certainly doesn’t sound like it. Lord knows, my life has been no crystal stair, but I hardly expected that both of my children would turn against me.’
    â€˜Dilys didn’t turn against you,’ Colin rehearsed the ancient litany. ‘She’s simply staying away until she gets an apology.’
    â€˜I’d sooner be blown to flinders than say I’m sorry that I spoke the truth.’
    â€˜It wasn’t the truth. Dilys didn’t get her job by wearing skirts as short as life. She doesn’t keep it by wearing blouses so thin you can spit through them onto her bosom. And she didn’t get that promotion by acting the sassy slut on that course in Wolverhampton.’
    She larded her face with the usual outrage. ‘I never said any of that!’
    â€˜Oh yes, you did.’ In desperation, he turned the oven up from hot to fierce. ‘Don’t forget that I
heard
you. I was
there
.’
    â€˜Well, you can get boils on your bottom!’ She took to a virulent clattering of pots and dishes that lasted well past the time his supper was scorched on the top, if not heated through the middle. Forlornly, he picked at the warm clag round the edges. It was horrible. The filling tasted peculiarly metallic, and the topping could have been carpet underlay after a boiler leak. He took advantage of the fact her back was turned to twist Frampton Commercial’s letter round on the table.
How
had they managed to make that business of annual fire extinguisher inspections sound like a favour? ‘Nice?’ she asked over her shoulder, moving on from clashing pots to trimming a fresh metal scouring pad to ram down the mouse hole at the back of the larder. ‘Very tasty,’ he told her, pushing his plate as far away as possible. But obviously the mantle of conviction was not round his shoulders, for, swivelling round from the sink, she reached to pick up, not just his abandoned plate, but also the carton in which a huge slab of Fifine’s Celeriac and Truffle Whatsit still lay, congealing.
    Scraping the hideously expensive leftovers straight into Flossie’s bowl, her only real revenge on him for his statutory and practised defence of his sister was to announce with satisfaction: ‘I suppose I shall have to let her have it – though it will almost certainly make her sick.’

4
    COLIN SHOWED UP at Tor house dead on time. It was Dilys who sent a series of busy-busy messages down through Security, and finally stepped out of the lift into Reception still acting as if, without her last twenty minutes of full attention, the entire glassy edifice might well have crumbled.
    â€˜Sorry,’ she said, dropping a last few envelopes into the tray on the front desk.
    â€˜I don’t mind at all if we’re late.’
    Still puffed with office importance, she missed his mild tease. Otherwise, he might have thought that it was in retaliation that she said, glancing at her watch, ‘It’s very nearly half past. We’ll have to go the quick way, down Bridge Row.’
    â€˜No!’
    But she’d already started off. He had to follow. Fine till they reached the corner, but the minute the wide expanse of street swung into view, he broke out in the usual sweat and his heart started thudding. He hated Bridge Row. He hadn’t once walked