Could it really have been six years? She’d have a sherry, that’s what she’d do. Celebrate the arrival of 1932 and her survival of six years of slaughter. She poured herself a glass. They hadn’t got her yet, though, had they? She was still standing, or sitting anyway – in her chair by the fire, her son playing with his boat in his bedroom. She could hear him and Finetta sailing over choppy waters through the wall. She leaned her head back. The sherry melted into her limbs. She closed her eyes. It wasn’t so bad, the assassination. She’d got used to the feeling of dogs at her throat. They hadn’t killed her yet. They kept getting side-tracked by doctor’s reports, and applications to extend his visits. Crowther had suggested they put his time on tick. They’d agreed before school broke up – that’s how he’d put it; as if the legal system was a term at Eton – that they’d apply to have her costs seen – get Joan to pay a loan until judgement. “Won’t it delay things?” she’d replied. She was meeting his costs but only just. Her allowance was emptied every month. Twice Coutts & Co had given her a loan, but Crowther hadn’t seemed so keen on getting to the end when the last bill went unpaid. He’d leaned his fat stomach into his desk and said, “We cannot ignore the housekeeping, madam.” Just like Miss Barnes.

The bell rang. She got up and went to the window. No one in the street. The portico obscured the front door – if someone was standing up close she couldn’t have seen them. She went downstairs. The bell rang again. She checked her face in the hall mirror, her hair, the shawl slung over her shoulders. She noticed as she turned the latch that her feet were bare.

“May I introduce myself, madam, the finest winda’ cleaners and chimney sweepers in Fulham—”

“Oh.” A man in overalls, a cart loaded with ladders, a boy on the seat wrapped in overcoat, horse stamping in the snow. Not anything else. Not police or post boys with telegrams; not fight and defence and panic.

“Sackler & Potts.” He handed her a card. “May I ask if you have anyone engaged? Charming house.”

“Thank you.”

“We’d be ready to start right away.”

“Would you?” Douglas used to organise the men – the windows of her house had got so black she’d forgotten what clean was.

“I take it you have that chimney swept regular.”

She’d never had it done at all.

“Perhaps you’d like me to speak to the gentleman?”

“There isn’t one,” said Enid. “But I suppose it needs doing.”

“I’ll say it needs doing, madam.”

Sackler, or perhaps Potts, shifted on his feet. His cart horse snorted plumes of hot breath, and the boy huddled deeper into his coat.