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really said,” Emma asked one day, “but what was she like? I don’t mean in looks, but in ways?”
    And Mad, with the fearful directness that was so much a part of her, looked her granddaughter straight in the eye and said, “She was a pretty little thing, darling, but, quite frankly, terribly stupid. I never knew what Pa saw in her.”
    And so forever after, whenever Emma did anything foolish, or said something silly, or broke a plate or ran out of petrol, she felt she was being like her mother and that Mad despised her for it. Which made life difficult.
    Later on, when she went through to the dining room to clear away Mad’s lunch (they generally had it together, but today it had seemed wiser to have it in the kitchen with Dottie, and help with the boys), she found that the dishes were still on the hot plate untouched, and the dining room was empty. Her grandmother must have gone back again to her bedroom, and with pangs of conscience—perhaps she wasn’t feeling well—Emma ran upstairs to see. The bedroom was empty too. Emma glanced out of the window, and saw the stooping figure of Mad out in the plowed field. She had Joe’s garden spade and she was digging. At least, she had been digging. She was turning the earth over now, and the thing that had been Spry was no longer there. She paused when she had finished, and, leaning on the spade, looked out to sea. The warship was at anchor still, and some of the helicopters had returned to their base aboard. A glimmer of sun peeked through the bleak November sky. The ensign at the quarterstaff in the stern was plain to see now, and it was the Stars and Stripes.
    Mad turned, and began to walk slowly back to the gap in the field leading to the orchard. Emma went downstairs. Better to say nothing. Better to pretend she had not seen. She went and hid in the downstairs lavatory until she heard her grandmother come into the house, and kick off her boots in the cloakroom. Then she waited until she heard her calling to Folly in the library. Emma knew what was going to happen. Mad would cut up her lunch for Folly and say nothing about it, so that Dottie would think she had eaten it herself. Emma was right. When she emerged from her hiding place and went into the library, Mad was looking for her spectacles and Folly was licking her chops.
    “Oh, there you are, darling,” said Mad. “I’ve been looking for you.”
    Liar, thought Emma. Infuriating, deceitful, beloved liar.
    “Tell Dottie the steak was delicious, but I couldn’t manage the veg—I’m not very hungry.”
    Nor would I be hungry, thought her granddaughter, if I’d just buried a mangled dog…
    “There was nothing on the one o’clock news,” Emma said. “Just a repeat of that statement by the Admiral, so we switched to the news from London and it was the same. Only this time the statement was made by the Commander-in-Chief Land Forces, General Something. Slightly different wording, but otherwise unchanged.”
    “I know,” said Mad, “I heard it.”
    “I wonder if things are frantic in London. What do you suppose Pa is doing?”
    “Treading the corridors of power. If there is any power left,” said Mad.
    Emma always found it curious that her grandmother indulged her adopted boys to the limit, aiding and abetting them in all misdeeds, but when it came to her only son she frequently disapproved. She used to say Pa boasted. And he didn’t, she insisted, get his conceit from her, or from his dramatist father who was always so original and amusing, but from a parson great-grandfather who had failed to become a bishop. Her son Victor, she insisted, always made out that he knew everyone and kept his finger on the pulse of the world, and that people at the top asked his advice about everything from banking to politics.
    “Perhaps they do,” Emma would say in defense of her father.
    “Nonsense,” said Mad. “If I ever ask Vic’s advice about anything it’s invariably wrong. He once made me buy some shares