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be going to stay with Grandma …’ (Mr Conroy looked very pleased) ‘and …’
    ‘What Grandma? Big Grandma, d’you mean?’ asked Ruth, horrified.
    ‘You’ll have a splendid time,’ said Mr Conroy heartily.
    ‘Is it a joke?’ asked Naomi, ‘because it’s not very funny if it is.’
    ‘Big Grandma doesn’t like us,’ remarked Rachel dismally.
    ‘Of course she does, when you behave yourselves anyway,’ Mr Conroy replied, still speaking horribly cheerfully to cover up how guilty he was feeling.
    ‘Is it true?’ asked Naomi. ‘Just tell me whether it’s true or not.’
    ‘I shall take you up there by train on Saturday,’ said Mrs Conroy, throwing all her former caution to the wind. ‘You’ve been wanting to go away this summer, and now you are going. And it’s no use you arguing,’ she added, ‘because it’s all arranged. So you might as well make the best of it.’
    ‘You’ll have a wonderful time; summer by the sea in Cumbria,’ Mr Conroy said encouragingly.
    ‘Big Grandma,’ said Ruth, ‘thinks we’re awful. You should have heard what she said to me last time she was here.’
    ‘Are we going to stay with Big Grandma?’ asked Phoebe. ‘Why? She says I’m spoilt! I’m not going!’
    ‘You all are,’ Mr Conroy said, ‘and we expect you Big Ones to help take care of the Little Ones.’
    ‘Can I take my money?’ Phoebe asked.
    Rachel was crying again.
    Ruth and Naomi escaped from the table and went up to their bedroom and shut the door. As soon as they were able, Rachel and Phoebe followed after them. They had great faith in their big sisters, who so far had never let them down. Very unhappy, but not quite despairing, they climbed the stairs.
    Mr Conroy said to Mrs Conroy, ‘I never thought they’d expect a share, did you?’
    ‘They’ll soon forget it,’ Mrs Conroy comforted him. ‘They’ve plenty to take their minds off it. Don’t you worry.’
    Upstairs, nobody said anything.

    ‘Ruth and Naomi will think of something.’
    Rachel and Phoebe consoled themselves constantly with this thought, for had not their sisters in the past rescued them from so many impossible situations. Not that the solutions provided by Ruth and Naomi necessarily improved matters, far from it in most cases. Still, they generally managed to alter and enliven the course of events. Had they not, for example, provided pets for a pet show from a petless household?
    (‘Nobody told me it was only live animals. It’s a very healthy dead rabbit. I’ve brushed him and brushed him. I’ve called him Ben …’)
    And Phoebe had won a consolation prize.
    They had even resurrected Father Christmas, when Rachel and Phoebe, tearful and disillusioned, had thought he was dead for ever. No words of reassurance could have been more comforting than the huge heap of soot over-flowing the fireplace onto the hearth rug, and the frightful black footprints all the way up the stairs. The facts were undeniable. A few dark fingerprints on a pillowcase might be the work of their parents, but this enormous, reckless distribution of evidence could only have had one source.
    ‘He’s been,’ gloated Rachel in ecstasy, dancing black to the ankles on the hearthrug.

    The following day a little comfort was given to Ruth and Naomi; one small sign that their gods had not abandoned them entirely.
    ‘Come and see Egg Yolk,’ said Naomi, meeting Ruth in a corridor.
    Wendy, who could never leave well alone, had picked up a bee to prove it was possible and had been rather badly stung.
    ‘You are a pig,’ said Ruth to the afflicted one. ‘That poor bee will die now.’
    ‘It stung me,’ howled Wendy. She had to go to the sickroom and lie down all morning and her arm swelled up from her hand to her elbow.
    ‘Well, that’s something,’ said Naomi.

    It proved impossible for the girls to obtain the money they felt due to them. On Friday afternoon Naomi (who had had the idea) marched into their local building society followed by a