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everyone at the dinner table.
    His tone suggested he was merely giving information and required no reply from the audience assembled for dinner. They concurred. It was not mentioned.
    Mitchell, always the self-appointed chef, had spent the afternoon roasting the hunk of beef Joe had insisted on paying for in the market that morning. He sliced it gleefully, pink blood oozing from its centre.
    ‘None for me, thank you,’ Kitty said politely.
    ‘Oh, just a morsel.’ A thin slice of bloody meat dropped from his fork and landed on her plate.
    ‘Morsel is Mitchell’s favourite word.’ Joe picked up his napkin and tucked it into his shirt collar.
    Laura poured the wine. She was wearing an ornate African necklace, a thick band of plaited gold fastened with seven pearls around her neck.
    ‘You look like a bride,’ Kitty said admiringly.
    ‘Strangely enough,’ Laura replied, ‘this actually is a bridal necklace from our shop. It’s from Kenya.’
    Kitty’s eyes were watering from the horseradish, which she spooned into her mouth as if it was sugar. ‘So what do you and Mitchell sell at your “Cash and Carry”?’
    ‘“Emporium”,’ Laura corrected her. ‘We sell primitive Persian, Turkish and Hindu weapons. And expensive African jewellery.’
    ‘We are small-time arms dealers,’ Mitchell said effusively. ‘And in between we sell furniture made from ostriches.’
    Joe rolled a slice of meat with his fingers and dipped it into the bowl of horseradish. ‘Furniture is made from ostriches and horseradish is made from horses,’ he chanted.
    Nina flung down her knife. ‘Shut the fuck up.’
    Mitchell grimaced. ‘Girls of your age shouldn’t use such ugly words.’
    Her father nodded as if he entirely agreed. Nina stared at him furiously as he polished his spoon with the end of the tablecloth. She knew her father had a lot of time for what Mitchell called ‘ugly’ words. When she told him, as she regularly did, that she was sick of wearing totally sad shoes to school with the wrong colour tights, her father the poet corrected her choice of words: ‘Next time say totally sad fucking crap shoes. It will give your case more emphasis.’
    ‘Ugly words are for ugly thoughts.’ Mitchell briskly tapped the side of his bald head and then licked a smear of horseradish off his thumb. ‘I never would have sworn in front of my father when I was your age.’
    Joe shot his daughter a look. ‘Yes, my child. Please don’t swear like that and offend the fuckers at this table. Especially Mitchell. He’s dangerous. He’s got weapons. Swords and ivory revolvers.’
    ‘Ac-tu-ally’ – Mitchell wagged his finger – ‘what I really need is a mousetrap, because there are rodents in this kitchen.’
    He glanced at Kitty Finch when he said ‘rodents’.
    Kitty dropped her slice of beef on the floor and leaned towards Nina. ‘Horseradish is not made out of horses. It’s related to the mustard family. It’s a root and your father probably eats so much of it because it’s good for his rheumatism.’
    Joe raised his thick eyebrows. ‘Whaat? I haven’t got rheumatism!’
    ‘You probably have,’ Kitty replied. ‘You’re a bit stiff when you walk.’
    ‘That’s because he’s old enough to be your father,’ Laura smiled nastily. She was still puzzled why Isabel had been so insistent that a young woman, who swam naked and obviously wanted her middle-aged husband’s attention should stay with them. Her friend was supposed to be the betrayed partner in their marriage. Hurt by his infidelities. Burdened by his past. Betrayed and lied to.
    ‘Laura congratulates herself on seeing through people and talking straight,’ Joe declared to the table. He squeezed the tip of his nose between his finger and thumb, a secret code between himself and his daughter, of what he wasn’t sure, perhaps of enduring love despite his flaws and foolishness and their mutual irritations with each other.
    Kitty smiled nervously at Laura.