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morning? I’ll meet the train at Abbots Halt at 12:15.”
    Weena put the phone down, took off the blouse and went along to the bathroom where the laundry basket overflowed with her dirty clothes—blacks, reds, navies and greys. She carefully shoved the blouse into the sleeve of a sweatshirt, so no glimmer of white could be seen, and dumped both back in the basket. She knew that presently her mother’s nerve would give and she would shove the lot, unchecked, into a too-hot wash. And serve her mother right, and Weena could play the innocent when the blouse was discovered, grey and ruined, its sheen and its memories gone forever.
    Francine answered the telephone to Dervish, Weena’s boss. She held her ruined, once-white blouse in her hand.
    “Can I speak to Weena?” he asked.
    “I don’t know who she is,” said Francine, and put the phone down.
    It rang again.
    “Wrong number,” she said this time, but before she could hang up Dervish spoke.
    “You’re Weena’s mother,” said Dervish, “and I don’t know who she is either, so we’re on the same side. Is it a child, is it an employee, is it Superbitch? Since her father died, she’s been a nightmare! I’m her employer. Hello.”
    “She’s been a nightmare since the day she was born,” said Francine. “Daddy’s little jail-bait. So why don’t you fire her? Does she have some hold over you?”
    “She’s a good little writer,” said Dervish, “with a certain flair, and has a future in journalism if she can get over this bad patch.”
    “She has a hold on you,” said Francine, flatly.
    “But if she doesn’t deliver her piece on fluoride pollution by Friday afternoon, she loses her job. Will you tell her that?”
    “No,” said Francine. “Supposing I were to deliver a piece on fluoride pollution by Friday afternoon in her place, would I get her job? Literary style is inherited too, you know; part of the genetic gestalt.”
    There was a pause at the other end. “Well, you’d better come up and see me sometime.”
    “I’ll be there Friday afternoon,” said Francine.
    “That was Weena,” said Defoe. “I think you upset her.”
    “And why should I not upset her?” asked Elaine. “She irritates me.”
    “I’d rather you didn’t let it show. It’s always unwise to upset the press.”
    “When you had a TV show to run, perhaps. Now it can hardly matter.”
    “Thank you very much, Elaine,” said Defoe, with irony.
    “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant you were doing her the favour. When is she coming?”
    “On Monday,” said Defoe. “I asked her to stay for lunch. I thought she should be pacified.”
    “But I go to pottery class on Monday,” said Elaine.
    “Oh goddamnit, I forgot,” said Defoe. “Call her up and put her off.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” said Elaine. “I’ll serve something simple and go, and you two can linger. She won’t think I’m too rude, I hope. It’s not as if her generation sets much store on manners.”
    “No, but she’s an Eloi,” said Defoe. “A throw-forward. They are easy to hurt; prone to bruising. Unlike the Morlocks. Those of us who have dwelt too long in TV studios can’t help being Morlocks.”
    “She would make an insubstantial lunch, I fear,” said Elaine.
    “You know your problem, Elaine?” asked Defoe, and answered the question himself. “You suffer from high self-esteem.”
    “I didn’t know I had a problem,” she said.
    The telephone rang. Defoe took it. It was their daughter, Daphne. “Well?” barked Defoe. His daughter, who had delighted his younger years with her wide-eyed charm, her curly-headed, little-girl ways, had little by little turned square-jawed and mirthful: she had ceased to adore him in a way he understood. She was too like her mother—the irony had entered her soul. It had descended when she was seven, as a soul descends into a five-month foetus. He remembered the occasion. Daphne had fallen down a well in the garden. She crouched twelve feet down,