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are and I’m ashamed of me . They did the best they could and coped in ways that
worked for them. I shouldn’t have set myself up as judge and
jury.’
    ‘You were just a kid, surely?’
    ‘I suppose so. They were all dead by the
time I was sixteen.’
    ‘Gwen, cut yourself some slack. You were a child , for God’s sake!’
    ‘In some ways, yes. Chronologically, I was a
child. In other ways I felt middle-aged. My mother used to take me
out with her when she went on her thieving sprees. She thought if
she had a child in tow, people would be less likely to notice her
nicking stuff.’
    ‘Probably true. What did she steal?’
    ‘Food mostly. All her money went on drugs.
So we used to do Waitrose together. Only we really did
Waitrose. Pay for some stuff, steal more. I never went hungry.
There was always food in the house, good nutritious food. It just
hadn’t been paid for. But in the end I couldn’t eat it. I felt so
ashamed. Then I thought maybe I could blackmail Sasha into coming
off drugs by starving myself. So I went through an anorexic stage
when I was about eleven. She didn’t even notice. But Aunt Sam did.
She said if I didn’t eat, she’d take me to our GP and tell him my
mother was a junkie and a thief, then I’d be taken into care.’
    ‘She’d have shopped her sister?’
    ‘Well, she threatened to. And I believed
her. So I started eating again.’
    ‘Brutal, but effective.’
    ‘Yes, I suppose so. Aunt Sam was a tough
cookie. Well, she was with half a bottle of vodka inside her...
Tell me more about Harriet.’
    ‘Batty Hattie.’
    ‘Oh dear. As bad as that?’
    ‘Fan coined the nickname. She’s not the most
politically correct of women, as you’ll discover. My sister Harriet
is - how shall I put it? - eccentric . But quite harmless.
More sinned against than sinning, if you ask me. But I’m biased.
Hat’s extraordinarily fond of me for some reason.’
    ‘Well, they say blood is thicker than water.
She is your sister, not your half-sister.’
    ‘Maybe that’s it... She’s much younger than
the other three, so she was something of an only child until I came
along. Hattie was born nine years after Frances, so she never had
anyone to play with. Rae regarded her as the last in a long line of
disappointments - yet another baby who failed to be the longed-for
son. So Hattie was pretty much neglected, I think. She grew up a
bit wild and a bit... odd . But she wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Literally. She’s a vegetarian and won’t even kill a wasp. She helps
Viv and Tyler in the garden and one of her jobs is to collect up
all the snails. Viv won’t use bait because it poisons the birds.
Hattie’s supposed to drown the snails, but she refuses.’
    ‘What on earth does she do with them?’
    ‘Disposes of them in hedgerows and ditches
around Creake Hall. Apparently she can be seen on a summer’s
evening, sauntering along, like something out of Thomas Hardy,
swinging her bucket, broad-casting snails. God knows what she’s
doing to the ecological balance of the countryside.’ Alfie slowed
down as we approached a crossroads. ‘We’re nearly there. Are you
sure you’re ready for this?’
    ‘I’m looking forward to it! From what you’ve
told me, I fully expect your family to be as entertaining - and
exasperating - as you.’
    ‘You can have too much of a good thing, you
know.’
    ‘On the contrary. As my late Uncle Frank
used to say, “Too much is never enough.” And believe me, he would know.’
     

Chapter Five
    Gwen
    I don’t know what I’d been expecting. A ramshackle
farmhouse. A Georgian rectory, perhaps. I certainly wasn’t
expecting an Elizabethan manor house, a jumble of tall, barley
sugar chimneys and crow step gables, red brick walls and a battery
of mullioned windows, winking at me as the car struggled up the
pot-holed drive.
    It was love at first sight. I knew even
before I entered Creake Hall that it would be a House of Horrors,
domestic, architectural and probably culinary,