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mommy. She came into the room and laid a black-gloved hand on eachof them. She smelled of cigarettes, and perfume and something else aromatic, which they weren’t old enough to identify as gin. ‘Don’t worry, Laura sweetheart, I’m quite all right. You both look
beautiful
. Are you ready to come downstairs now? Granpa and granma have just arrived; and so has Aunt Beverley.’
    â€˜I haven’t washed my teeth yet,’ said Laura.
    â€˜You’re all dressed up in black and you haven’t washed your teeth? You’ll get toothpowder all over your collar.’
    â€˜I have to wash my teeth, you can die from dental caries.’
    Mommy didn’t argue. Elizabeth couldn’t see her face, because her veil was too dark, but she could guess what she was thinking. When mommy had gone downstairs, and Laura was industriously brushing her teeth with her Donald Duck toothbrush, Elizabeth came into the bathroom and hissed at her, ‘Don’t talk about dying any more. Mommy doesn’t like it. It’d bad enough Peggy being drowned.’
    â€˜But they told us at school. And you can die from not washing your hands, after you’ve been to the bathroom.’
    â€˜Oh, certainly. And you can die if somebody drops a cow on your head.’
    They went downstairs. The front door was wide open and a few mischievous snowflake-fairies were flying over the threshold and dancing across the orange-and-yellow Shaker rug. An icy draft was streaming in, ruffling the fringes of the lampshades, and scattering black-edged condolence cards across the floor, but at least it was clearing away the woodsmoke and brightening up father’s sulky fires.
    Aunt Beverley was taking off her sleek brown mink and talking eight million to the dozen, as usual. Aunt Beverley was a very tall mannish woman in her late thirties, with a long neck, and a big, bloodless, bony head. Mommy always said that Aunt Beverley believed herself to be much more beautiful than she really was. She must have spent untold eye-wateringhours plucking her brows into geometrically-perfect arches, and pinning up her hair into a glossy black tidal wave.
    But her ears were too big and lobular, and her nose was too complicated, and her funeral-dress might have been Pauline Trigere but it hung on her frame (in Elizabeth’s opinion) like a photographer’s black cape over a camera and tripod.
    â€˜Well, the roads were
so
darned impossible that we nearly turned back at Cannondale. I can’t tell you, Margaret, it was Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, all over. Humphrey was adamant that he didn’t want to die in Connecticut. He said his grandparents died in their beds in Braggadocio, Missouri, and his parents died in their beds in Braggadocio, Missouri, and he certainly didn’t intend to be frozen to death in the middle of winter in a rented automobile in some prissy Yankee dormitory in Connecticut. And, why! Look who’s here! My dear little Lizzie; my dear little Laura!’
    Aunt Beverley bent down and kissed them both with her sticky scarlet lips. She smelled of cigarettes and freckle cream. She wore four rows of sparkling jet beads, and a ruby-and-emerald brooch in the shape of an apple tree. Mommy had known Aunt Beverley for ever and ever – since
Fifty Thousand Frenchmen
, when Aunt Beverley had been wardrobe mistress. Elizabeth knew that there was something different about Aunt Beverley. She wasn’t at all like mommy, or like any of the women who lived in Sherman. She was bossy, and wickedly gossipy, and drank whiskey. Even the men seemed to be afraid of her. She wasn’t their
real
aunt, of course, she just liked them to call her aunt. She had never married: she was still ‘Miss Lowenstein’, although she never seemd to be wanting for male escorts. Humphrey was the latest: a bulbous-eyed man in his early forties with thinning hair and a little clipped moustache.
    â€˜I’m very sorry for