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he's well."
    "We don't get sick," Kate said firmly. "None of us can afford to be anything but healthy. Jacko's tough."
    She gave Laura a glance that was faintly defiant but which seemed at the same time to be asking a favour, although quite what the favour might be Laura had no idea. She sat listening to her mother and Chris play the book-lover's game of finding which books of all the books in the world they had both read and enjoyed. They agreed about many of them — an ominous sign, and when they did not agree they argued like old friends, criticizing one another's taste with complete ease and confidence. Laura thought Mrs Fangboner had a lot to answer for. After a while she got up and tucked her own library book under her arm and said she was going to bed.
    "Give me a kiss!" Kate commanded.
    "It might be setting a risky example," Laura said, making a joke of a serious thought.
    "That's cheeky," Kate said, without particular resentment, however.
    "And shrewd," Chris agreed.
    "I'll give you two tomorrow," Laura said, trying to be friendly though private, feeling they were laughing together at her, both happily retreating into an adult world where she could not quite follow them yet, even though she was the sort of girl a boy like Barry Hamilton could like from a distance. So she smiled politely and tried to mean it, going to bed because, after all, they did not really need her.

4 The Smile on Jacko's Face
    Laura was talked out of sleep the next morning by her mother nagging back the shallow tide of retreating sleep, anxious because Jacko had had a bad night— a night of terrible dreams. Yet Kate was unexpectedly bouncy as if the day might hold something to be looked forward to. Sorting and cataloguing the various jumbled alarms of the previous day Laura washed herself awake and found an unexpectedly organized breakfast waiting for her— apple-juice, stewed apple and cornflakes, toast, and a cup of tea. She was at first taken aback, and then resigned, recognizing, by she knew not what clues, that Kate had managed her morning so well because of an energy of optimism that had nothing to do with her children.
    "You like him, don't you?" Laura asked accusingly.
    "Yes, I do," Kate answered at once without asking who they were discussing, and added, half pleadingly, "Don't you think he's nice?"
    "He's all right," said Laura grudgingly. All right, but unnecessary, she wanted to say — she did say — but managed to keep the words in her mind.
    "He's going bald," was the only criticism she allowed herself.
    "Yes, but he's got a nice laugh," Kate said. "A nice laugh is deadly. He looks really mischievous about solemn things, not just big, solemn things like politics which anyone can make fun of, but little ones like — telephone bills."
    They had had a telephone once, but Kate had been unable to pay the bill and it had been cut off and had hung on their wall like a petrified insect hibernating through a winter of cold debt until at last post-office men had come and taken it away.
    "Besides," Kate said, "he likes me, and, as far as I'm concerned, that shows he's a man of taste and judgement. All that stuff about Mrs Fangboner... it was a sort of line really. He just wanted an excuse to talk to me. Still, it was a cunning thing to pick on because it led to sharing jokes and that's a short-cut to getting to know someone. If your jokes match up, it's like being Alice in Through the Looking-GIass. Off you go through the third square by the railway and find yourself in the fourth square in no time."
    "He could have bought a book," Laura said. "That's a very attractive thing for a customer to do," and she carried her breakfast through to Kate's room where Jacko, recovering from nightmares, was still in Kate's bed. Immediately, she saw he was duller, quieter and greyer than she could ever remember him before and as she approached he immediately held his hands out, backs up.
    "Hey, how did you get the stamp off?" Laura cried, but Kate,