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about it. He listened to Dot’s tirade gravely; unpacked his things; had his tea; and then, later in the evening, he and Dot had a long, complicated, sotto voce quarrel behind closed doors. What it was about, Imogen never really learned, but the outcome seemed to be that Herbert wasn’t to be sent home after all: he was to stay and be impossible here.
    First Dot: then the boys: then Cynthia. All of them uninvited: and now Herbert as well. It was the last straw.
    Or so Imogen thought. In fact, it turned out to be the last but one.
    “This is Piggy,” announced Robin, leading in out of the darkness a tall, heavily-built girl with a huge suit-case, and a heavy, loosely-braided plait of blonde hair falling over one shoulder. “I’m not sleeping with her,” he added, glancing round as if for applause.
    Actually, of course, it only made things more difficult. Now the girl would have to have a room, a bed, of her own. One of the small attics it would have to be, they were the only rooms left.One of them Imogen had already taken over for herself, until such time as she could make up her mind where she really wanted to be; but there was still the adjoining one, though it would need quite a bit of clearing-out before you could put anyone into it. It would be cold, too … Imogen was already short of spare blankets, and sick to death of carrying them up and down stairs.
    It was all a great nuisance. What did Robin think he was playing at, anyway? He’d explained that the girl had been thrown out of her flat and had nowhere to go—but why was he letting that bother him? If he wasn’t sleeping with her, or borrowing money from her (and you could see at a glance that she had none to be borrowed) then what was he doing? What was in it for him? Christmas spirit?
    It was eerie. Really it was.

CHAPTER VII
    C HRISTMAS IN THE House of Mourning: Edith, with many meaning looks, sympathy firing on all cylinders, brought in a pot of white hyacinths, but only because there were no such things as black ones. Imogen thanked her nervously, and waited to see from which direction the next assault would be launched. “A Quiet Christmas” everyone had earnestly agreed—and you could see them, as they spoke, working out just how much it would save, and what they could do with the money. No presents, it wouldn’t seem right, Yippee! And now, after all that, here they were, one after the other, twitching packages guiltily from behind their backs and shoving them at her as if they were dirty postcards. Soap. Bath salts. Writing-paper. All the things that a widow might reasonably be expected still to have some use for. And because they’d promised not to give her anything, and were breaking the promise, she had to be extra grateful and thank them twice, once for the present and once for the betrayal.
    But one of the betrayals—Cynthia’s—was a magnificent one: a brilliantly expensive Kaftan, covered in gold embroidery, and glitteringly unsuitable for anything except the kind of parties that Imogen would never be going to again. It would have been all right for the kind of parties she sometimes used to go to with Ivor; and he would have liked her to wear a thing like this. Would have liked it, that is, all the while she remained at his side, manifestly his possession; but on the other hand, he hated her to remain at his side at parties: it cramped his style with the beautiful wives of important husbands. And so actually it would all have been rather complicated. Her grief for Ivor was always running into tangles like this: no sooner did she get thinking, Oh, how Ivor would have loved this, than she had a sudden vision of how it would actually have been.
    And somehow the truth made her feel like crying even more. Funny.
    Still, you don’t cry on Christmas morning. Not with everyone looking at you and wondering if you are going to, and what they are supposed to do about it if you do.
    “Oh, thank you, Cynthia, how lovely!” she enthused,