“Of course I’m not. I’m just saying she could have stuck up for us. She could have said Fagus might get better.”

“Fagus isn’t going to get better.”

“She’ll promise mother she’ll look after me, then she’ll spend it all on blackjack.”

“What are you suggesting, Enid?” He shifted away from her, and his foot knocked against her thigh. “That we have another son to spite your lesbian sister and hope to Christ this one turns out okay ’cos the first one was a dud?”

Yes. That’s exactly what she thought.

Joan, 1921

8

Joan, 1921

Joan crouched beneath the landing window, her hand over her mouth. It wasn’t so much the words dud or spite as the other one. Pat leant against the bannisters. They’d heard everything, Joan on her way down, Pat on her way up. They’d stopped on the landing by the open window, caught by the voices, and listened to the row on the terrace below. At lesbians Joan had lost her balance, fallen forward and hit her head on the sill.

Pat peered forward to the window. Joan grabbed her skirt. “Get back. They’ll see you.”

“No they won’t.” She put her nose to the glass. “He’s walked off one way and she’s scampered in another. Poor Douglas. Too humiliating.”

“How does he know anything about us?”

“I’m not talking about us. I’m talking about that foul wife of his.”

“She’s still my sister.”

“She’s a harridan.”

“She’s desperate.”

“We all are in our own way,” said Pat. “Where were you going? I was on my way to bathe.”

Joan’s legs ached, and her foot had gone to sleep. “I’ll come with you.”

“Let’s slip a note under her door telling her we share bath toys.”

“Stop it,” said Joan, hitting Pat softly on the arm.

“Don’t be such a schoolgirl.” Pat took her hand and kissed it, right outside the drawing room, where anyone could have seen. “No one gives a farthing except perverts like Douglas. London is divided between those who know and don’t care and those who don’t care to know.”

They reached Pat’s room. She threw off the patchwork robe she’d been wearing all day and got into bed. “I do wish your mother would manage to warm more than one room at a time. My feet are glacial.”

“You should get your fire lit.”