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about the Queen Mother? She’s over ninety.’
    As if Muriel didn’t know. She willed Lizzie not to go on but said, ‘I’m sorry, Lizzie. It’s only just happened. Someone’s finding out. It’s sure to come on again before long.’
    Kitty joined the group. ‘I’ve got a Bunsen burner in the kitchen and bottled water.’
    ‘Can I fill a hot-water bottle?’ Lizzie’s voice began to get louder.
    Delilah departed without any information.
    Together, with a hot-water bottle filled to lukewarm from a cooling kettle, Muriel and Lizzie passed through candlelit passages to Lizzie’s room which was also bright with night lights, candles – even an old oil lantern as Muriel marvelled at the amazing competence of these emergency arrangements. The radiators, however, were already no more than tepid.
    Lizzie asked, twice, how long it was to be before the power came back.
    Promising to return, Muriel left Lizzie in her room and hoped that the groups from the outhouses managed independently. She dreaded Cleopatra clutching at candles or Hugh masquerading as invaluable during troubled times.
    Worse still – what if they elected to move in with her and her Tilley Lamps until problems were solved?
    When she sat down beside Peter he told her that Kitty had been to see him; to say that the house was swarming with her sisters and sisters-in-law and that Phyllis had bolted to the squash court with candles, provisions and a bottle of Chateâu d’Yquem.
    ‘Let’s leave it all to her. She’ll probably snuggle down with Hugh under the duvet on the futon. We’re fine here with Kitty’s outlying relations.’
    ‘Can I afford them?’
    ‘I daresay not but let’s take stock in the New Year when the snowdrops are out.’
    They muddled through the evening with many humble complaints from Lizzie: ‘It’s not for me. I’m worried about your grand guests.’
    ‘So am I. So am I. So am I,’ sang Muriel to herself as she and Peter interlocked in their comfortable bed.

Chapter 9
    It was perishing when Muriel woke. Dark, too, and she lit a candle. She tiptoed from the room leaving Peter and Monopoly to sleep and lighted her way with a torch to the bathroom where barely a trickle of water came from either tap at the basin.
    The royal party was due to arrive in the afternoon and with no telephone she was overpowered by anxiety for the needs of these privileged people. Believing herself to hear Lizzie’s teeth chatter when passing her bedroom door, Muriel shuddered but there was no sound of vomiting.
    She lit her way down the stairs and, in the hall, spotted an envelope on the floor near to the front door. It shone white against the darkness around her and the grim blackness of the Christmas tree.
    Inside the envelope was a written message, written, she presumed, by some local service; police or post-office. It read:
    ‘Clarence House has been trying to contact you by telephone. A spokesman for Queen Elizabeth, the QueenMother, has been wishing to confirm to you that she and her entourage will be arriving at Bradstow Manor at approximately four p.m. today. They are all enjoying the prospect of their visit and Her Majesty wants it to be known that her only special request is that the house be warm and the party be seated by three p.m. on Christmas Day to watch her daughter, the Queen, give her annual broadcast to the nation.’
    Muriel shook. No power for the Queen’s broadcast. She dreaded the sound of the click-click-click of Lizzie’s high-heeled shoes as she groped her way down the stairs, dripping candle grease and moaning about the cold.
    No one was about as she reread the ominous instructions from Clarence House by the light of her torch.
    This space of time, allowing her to be alone in the house, was heaven sent. She managed, with trials, to get a fire going in Peter’s study and flung his cigarette butts onto the flames. As she acted, she thought how tremendous and wondrous it was to have his backing.
    The house awoke.
    Kitty