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boasted to Albert about his mistress who exhausted him nightly, which is why he was always late home with nothing left for Vera, his loyal wife.
    For a moment Vera’s fury nearly sent her dashing up to the bedroom to have it out but the combination ofEsmond being traumatised and the feeling that she had more to gain by pretending to know nothing prevented her. Instead, she went out into the garden and sauntered tragically among the pink aubretia, the pelargoniums so red and the trailing lobelias so very, very blue. Here, among the bedding plants and the striped and weed-free lawn, she could weep unseen those tears her new role required.
    In fact, her performance did not go unseen. Horace watched her from the bedroom and was puzzled. He had grown accustomed to her theatricals and sudden changes of mood, so in the present circumstances he would have expected something more melodramatic and vigorous than this pensive and melancholy performance. A woman wailing for her demon lover or, in the present case, a mother wailing for her demon son seemed more appropriate than this demure and mournful progress. A new sense of unease crept over him. He’d desperately like to know what that damned oaf Albert had told her. It must have been something perfectly frightful to put her in this melancholy. Horace turned over and tried to sleep.

Chapter 10
    By the time Esmond arrived home from school, his mother had played out her role. It wasn’t sufficiently active to sustain for very long, and besides, she was determined to be bright and cheerful so that her darling boy wouldn’t be traumatised.
    ‘Daddy’s much better today,’ she announced, as she made tea and toast with honey. ‘He’s been working ever so hard lately and he needs to rest so we’ve got to be quiet and not disturb him.’
    ‘I am quiet,’ said Esmond. ‘I’ve been quiet ever since I gave up the drums and the piano lessons ages ago.’
    ‘Yes, dear, you’ve been very good. It’s just that Daddy’s nerves aren’t very … well, he’s exhausted himself mentally.’
    ‘You mean he’s been drinking,’ said Esmond, with rather more insight into his father’s problem than Mrs Wiley liked. She preferred her Esmond to be innocent.
    ‘I know all about it, Mum. He goes to the Gibbet & Goose and sits there drinking double Scotches when he gets off the train every night.’
    Vera was appalled, though less by the fact than by Esmond’s understanding.
    ‘He doesn’t. I mean, he may do occasionally, but … Anyway, how do you know?’
    ‘Because Rosie Bitchall told me. Her dad’s the barman there.’
    ‘Rosie Bitchall? That horrid girl who came to your seventeenth birthday party and went behind the sofa with Richard? You don’t still see her?’
    Vera was genuinely agitated now.
    ‘She’s in my class and we’re going to the same college next year.’
    Vera stopped pouring tea and put the pot down. Esmond’s simple statement had decided her. She had no intention of allowing her only son to fall in love with a slut like Rosie Bitchall who wore a ring through her nose and who, to put it mildly, was no better than she should be and who, in the words of Mrs Blewett, was a chip off the old block, the old block in question being her mother, Mabel. Vera knew exactly what that meant.
    ‘Well, Rosie Bitchall must have been mistaken.Anyway, enough of that. Your Uncle Albert came here to see Daddy this morning,’ she said, ‘and he and Auntie Belinda have invited you to stay with them until Daddy’s better. Now, isn’t that nice of them?’
    ‘Yes, but –’
    Mrs Wiley wasn’t having any ‘buts’.
    ‘I’m not going to argue about it,’ she said. ‘I’m not having you rampage about the house with your father lying upstairs ill in bed. And besides, you’ll learn something useful from your Uncle Albert.’
    ‘I don’t want to become a second-hand car dealer,’ said Esmond stubbornly. ‘I want to go into a bank like Dad and make money.’
    This was too