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thin grasping hands; obliged to shake hands with him, I was anticipating a stronger grip, as narrow wrists often produce – but his greedy fawning mitt was turned inside mine like some cornered, half-dead weasel.
    *   *   *
    Arthur didn’t discuss then with me.
    ‘That’s my business.’
    He wouldn’t tell me where he and his mother had lived latterly, or how often they’d seen their provider.
    It was information I couldn’t ask my father for, because asking – expressing an interest – might appear to condone the marriage. (Why keep it a secret as he had unless he was ashamed?)
    *   *   *
    ‘Forthwith your brother will be known as Arthur Havisham.’
    ‘But that’s not his real name.’
    ‘It will be now.’
    I was shocked. How could he be either my ‘brother’ or a Havisham?
    ‘In time Arthur will need to learn about the business. Receive a training.’
    ‘He will?’
    ‘Well, of course. That goes without saying, doesn’t it?’
    *   *   *
    He was attending a bona fide establishment for young gentlemen in the West of England, not that you would have deduced it from his conduct.
    In the house he was late for meals. He dragged his heels on the floor. He entered rooms without knocking. If he took a book from a shelf he didn’t replace it; if he dropped something he waited for a servant to pick it up. When my father wasn’t there he spat fruit stones into the fireplace grate. One day some coins fell out of my father’s pocket on to his chair, unnoticed by him, and I saw Arthur surreptitiously scoop them up and put them into his own pocket. He received his horse saddled from the stable, and left it sweating in the yard once he had ridden it hard, and showed no interest in the animal’s well-being. Behind my father’s back (and sometimes only just) he silently mimicked me, or he cocked a snook at my father, or pretended to be hacking up food into his hands. He aimed pebbles at small birds, then (as his confidence grew) bigger stones at my Silver and Gold.
    After only months he was cocky enough to let his dislike of me stay expressed on his face, not now bothering to hide it from my father.
    *   *   *
    Our father, as he would have it.
    ‘That sounds like God,’ I reproved him.
    ‘Thinks he is God too.’
    I gawped.
    ‘No one to tell him he isn’t, I s’pose.’
    And he talked of Satis House, with a leery smile, as his ‘dear old chimney corner’.
    ‘You’re away at school,’ I said.
    ‘It’s still my home.’
    ‘I’ve always lived here.’
    ‘And now I do too. High time I got to fit in with you lot.’
    ‘What makes you think you ever will?’
    ‘Oh, I’m adaptable.’
    ‘Don’t I have to be adaptable as well?’ I asked him.
    ‘You’ve no choice, have you?’
    ‘No. No, I don’t.’
    ‘We’re agreed on that, then.’
    ‘That’s the only thing we do –’
    ‘Worry not, sister –’
    ‘Half-sister.’
    ‘– I’ll make sure we’re all quite cosy together.’
    *   *   *
    I was surprised by Sally’s continuing reluctance to condemn Arthur.
    The son of the former and departed Mrs Bundy had forfeited the right to any sort of respect, I felt. I couldn’t understand why she should try to think her way into the spiteful workings of his mind. Why should he merit anyone’s special consideration?
    ‘It’s because I stand a little way back,’ she said.
    No. No, I didn’t believe that.
    And it wasn’t because I hadn’t strongly presented my case against Arthur. It might have been that she felt I argued too powerfully, but wasn’t that a true Havisham’s privilege?
    *   *   *
    Arthur had no genuine interest in the brewery.
    Between school terms he pretended that he wanted to learn, since he thought saying so would please my father: and he needed to be in my father’s good books, to have a chance of his allowance being increased.
    My father must have seen how things were; and heard, too. Whenever my father was absent, Arthur was curt and