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of the year.’
    ‘That’s an exaggeration. They do all right.’
    ‘All right isn’t good enough. They hardly pay for themselves.’
    ‘I –’ Robert stops. ‘Graeme, I don’t want to talk about this now.’
    ‘Oh no?’ Graeme’s fuse is very short, but Robert doesn’t attempt to mollify him. ‘When? When will you see fit to discuss it with me?’
    ‘I’m getting married on Saturday, can’t you see that this –’
    Agnes appears beside Graeme. She moves close to him and slips her arm through his, smiling at Robert. Graeme feels her body pressed to his through layers of cloth. He can feel her breast, heavy and warm against his arm. Robert is stupid with happiness, he thinks.
    Agnes speaks as though the incident on her first night at the Black Hat never happened, as though she didn’t call Graeme a cripple. ‘How can one family produce two such good-looking men?’ she asks. She eases herself away and steps lightly over to Robert’s side. She draws his face down and kisses him. Graeme sees a flash of open mouth, tongue.
    ‘Well ma’am,’ Graeme speaks in a bad imitation of a Southern US accent, charming and surly at the same time, ‘damned if I can tell you the answer to that.’ He makes as though to tip a hat and walks away.
    Agnes sits next to the teenager, Jenny, at lunch and Jenny feels singled out, pleased. Karen apologizes for the food, mostly leftovers from evening meals of the past few days. ‘If I’d known –’
    ‘Don’t worry Karen,’ Robert speaks sharply. ‘It’s fine. Agnes is one of us. She’s not a guest. She’s not a stranger.’
    After she has served Robert and Graeme, Karen takes a plate of food over to Martin. Like most household tasks, the care of Martin falls to her, and this is not something she questions. Karen doesn’t ask questions – not yet. She puts a large bib apron on over Martin’s head and sets the plate on his knees. She places a fork in one of his hands, a knife in the other. She returns to the table and he proceeds to eat rather messily, like a badly programmed automaton. No one watches over him.
    During the meal Agnes speaks to Jenny in a confiding tone, as though no one else can hear. ‘I’m not sure what to wear for the wedding,’ she says. ‘I think I need your help. We can go to London together this week.’
    Jenny smiles broadly and looks at Graeme and Robert for approval. ‘School?’ she asks.
    Graeme clears his throat but Agnes speaks before he can. ‘It’s only one day. It can’t do any harm. We’ll have a good time. We’ll go to a museum as well, how about that, that’s educational.’ She turns to Jenny and says, ‘We’ll go to the Museum of Fashion.’ She winks.
    Graeme eats quickly and stands to leave before any of the others are finished, grabbing his cane. ‘I’m going to the pub,’ he announces. ‘Jenny, you should be doing your homework.’
    Jenny stands obediently. She goes upstairs. Agnes and Robert help clear the table. Karen thinks for a moment that they might offer to clean up while she sorts out the babies, but they don’t. They leave holding hands, Robert saying they are going to inspect the rest of the house.
    Now Agnes is one of us, thinks Karen. Then she corrects herself. One of them. A Throckmorton.

Jenny longs for Agnes
    Jenny can’t believe her new sister-in-law-to-be is real. She’s like a creature from another planet, too glamorous and cool for Warboys. Completely unexpected and exciting.
    That night, after Agnes has gone back to the Black Hat, Jenny lies in bed chanting her resolutions. She is full of resolutions. Number one: Don’t eat. Jenny is tall and thin – a childish thin, she carries her breasts high on her ribcage and keeps her shoulders rounded, turned in, she is hipless, thighless, has no belly – but she is not too thin, and she would like to be too thin. She aspires to anorexia, but she hasn’t got the will and looks on this as a failure of sorts. Come mealtime she forgets, and eats