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indicate that he was giving this matter his full attention, “Do you mean to say that we are giving her our bedroom, and we’re paying her as well? How much?”
    Sylvia named a sum that made her husband walk down the corridor and straight down the stairs to the drinks cabinet. There he poured himself a large whisky. It was the first time that he had done so at such an early hour in the middle of the week without being privy to some catastrophic news about the stock market or a disastrous cabinet reshuffle. He gloomily dredged his memory for domestic trivia, and remembered that Sylvia had indeed showed him several gushingly written, effusive articles about the benefits of a so called in-house life coach. He snorted with derision and knocked back his scotch in one gulp.
    Meanwhile in another part of the house Harry Amble was sitting on the side of his bed, looking with distaste at a badly made up brunette that graced the front cover of a popular magazine called Fit Totty. He was slowly rolling a joint, and normally this activity would be culminated in the usual adolescent masturbation sequence that he had practised to perfection. This time however it wasn’t so satisfactory. The brunette seemed too young, too tawdry, too charmless. He wondered about the possibility of such a magazine containing slightly older women – there must be one, surely?
    At the other end of a number 52 bus route Maria Kandinsky was threading beads onto a silken cord. On her night off she came to the same cold, ill-lit room every week to perform the same repetitive task. She was engaged in making rosaries that she would sell to a man called Mishka for a small yet not insignificant sum, to top up her nest egg that she kept, as all good peasants used to, under her mattress. She’d stop off at the church on the way home and make desultory conversation with the other women there.
    Marmaduke was chasing rabbits in his sleep proudly showing off in his dreams a killer instinct to the poodle next door.
     
    Jack Blair had packed up and gone home to the certainty of a micro waved shepherd’s pie. He’d left the book of photographs in the garden shed. It seemed appropriate.
     
    The hour spent getting ready to go to dinner can be fraught, if not managed properly. For a start, it’s imperative to know what’s happening around you. If you are trying to relax with two slices of cucumber over your eyes it really can’t be done if you don’t know where all your charges are. Being in control is the most relaxing tonic in the world. I try and make sure I know exactly what my inmates are up to before I start to dress.
    I stored the deeds that I’d found in the Ambles safe in the secret compartment in my trunk, and carefully got dressed. I had a magnificent black leather cat suit from the 1960’s. It had been Mrs Peel’s from a hit TV series in the early seventies called The Avengers, and I thought that this would make the right sort of statement for this evening. My hair was a bit of a problem but I resolved the issue by winding it up into a bun. I applied my lipstick with a steady hand and allowed myself a slow lascivious wink to my reflection. Really, I had never looked better. There was a tentative knock at my door, and I guessed that it was the most biddable of the Ambles: Arabella. I was right.
    We walked down the stairs arm in arm, and I was gratified to see that the rest of the family were gathered in the hallway. Archie had not changed out of his dark well cut work suit, but Sylvia had thrown on a hideous beige silk scarf and a frumpy pair of pearl earrings. Hal was staring up at me as if being blessed with a visitation from on high. I squeezed Bella’s arm, “Goodness, what an attractive family you have,” I said as we joined them.
    Bella gazed adoringly at her brother and nodded violently.
    “I do hope you’re all in fine fettle tonight, your voices, I mean?” I said, as I adjusted the zipper to my cat suit in a looking glass. I pulled the