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drawing-room on her high heels. At one point she trod on one of those monstrous creepy cats and the animal's protests had joined her own. Whenever Madre said any words that could be understood, they amounted to the same message: "No, no, I won't go. This is my house. Burgo's going to come here and fetch me. He knows where to find me. So I won't go. Burgo loves me. He's going to come back." And so on, as the sisters exchanged glances which were both furious and desperate.
    It was Olga who got hold of the pile of Diaries and letter, half in and half out of a Safeways bag under her mother's chair.
    "At least we're taking these away, Madre. Right now," she said firmly; it was the voice of a Tory MP's wife dealing with a constituent. "We've had quite enough of that." Curiously enough, Olga's dive towards the bag had the effect of calming Lady Imogen, or at least restoring her to some sense of the present.
    "You can't take them. There's no point. I gave them to someone. I gave them away already. Didn't I?" Their mother now sounded more confused than hysterical.
    "What on earth are you talking about, Madre?" rapped out Millie, too sharply.
    Olga signed to her. "Millie, I know how to deal with this," she said quietly. Once again there was that sisterly sub-text, "Since I always do deal with it."
    "Who came, Madre?" Olga went on. "Everything's here. We'll look after everything for you, won't we, Millie? These boring old letters and things are just a worry for you."
    "That nice girl on television with the pretty-coloured hair. She took it all away and the letters."
    Olga Carter-Fox raised her eyebrows over her mother's head. Millie responded with a grimace.
    "Look, everything is here, Madre," Olga at her most reasonable and gentle 'all in this funny bag." Olga caught sight of a letter on House of Commons writing paper. For a moment she thought it must be from Harry... then she realised her mistake and frowned. At the same time Imogen Swain snatched at the bulging bag.
    "You can't have that. Burgo's sending someone to pick it up. I think he's coming himself. Somebody came last night who came?" She began to drift again.
    Millie and Olga left the house a little later together. Their mother was now sitting quite docilely in the drawing-room, her small figure almost extinguished by the two cats which had settled on top of her. Her last audible words, called after them in that little breathless voice, were: "You must find me somewhere where my girls can be happy." It never failed to irritate both Olga and Millie that their mother used the term 'my girls' for the creatures they referred to as 'those bloody cats'. But at least Madre seemed to be reconciled to moving.
    "And about time too," muttered Olga when Millie pointed this out. "You don't even know about the hairdresser incident the other day! Madre turned up for an appointment at Luciano's in Curzon Street. Apparently he used to do everyone's hair in the fifties. Only the trouble is that everyone's dead, including Luciano. The salon is now a casino. Actually they were extremely sweet as Madre loudly demanded to have her hair washed for an important lunch date amid the debris of late night gambling."
    They were in the darkened hall. The lights of the chandelier above their heads had fused long ago and Madre,
    with her ridiculous persecution mania, "They're going to kill me', and so forth and so on, had persistently refused to have an electrician in the house unless Olga could find her a female one. This, Olga, with a deep sigh, had put on her list of Things to Do for Madre (T.D.M. as Harry called it). Olga was scrabbling for the key Madre generally kept in a broken Chinese bowl on the hall table. She could not find it. Olga opened the door to the dining-room and put on a light: it was a room unused for years and would, thought Olga, have conveniently done as a dining-room for Miss Havisham. The shaft of light revealed that the bowl, which seemed to have lost yet another piece, was actually