I’ll be safe.

‘You look after yourself,’ Django repeats, thinking a dash of stout might be welcomed by the mashed potato.

‘That’s precisely what I’m doing,’ Cat says pensively.

The Spread ready, the four McCabes assemble. They stand by their places and look from one to the other in silence. Django gives the nod and they sit. And eat. He’s all for picking and dipping and having a taste of this, a soupçon of that. So arms stretch amiably and serving spoons chink and dollop. There’s much too much food but whatever’s left will be blended together tomorrow, liquidized the next day and then frozen, to reappear as soup in some not-too-distant colder time.

In the Drawing-room, over coffee and some dusty but undamaged After Eights which Pip discovered in her bedside table, Django looked to his three nieces. Fen looked wistful as ever, her blonde hair scrunched into a wispy pony-tail which made her look young and vulnerable and like she should be living at home. Django noticed that she was visibly thinner than when he saw her at Easter and knew that this could be attributed to one of two things.

‘Love or money, Fen?’ he asked.

She jolted and looked at each of her palms as if assessing the merits of telling him one thing or another.

‘Both,’ she said, folding her hands in her lap.

‘Has he too much or too little?’ Django enquired.

‘It depends,’ said Fen.

Django looked puzzled. Cat couldn’t resist. ‘One is loaded and the other is broke.’

‘Good God, girl!’ Django exclaimed in honest horror, much to Cat and Pip’s delight. ‘Two of them?’

‘Who is it to be?’ Cat asked Fen. ‘Have you decided yet? The old or the young?’

‘Who’s the one?’ Pip pushed. ‘The rich or the poor? Did you toss for it or did they have a duel?’

‘Neither,’ Fen wailed. ‘Both.’ She looked out of the window, unable to decipher the night from the moor, or the merits of one love from the other. Django, Cat and Pip gazed at her for a moment.

‘Pip,’ Django said sternly, ‘love or money?’

‘I can live most comfortably without either,’ said Pip, secretly wishing she had just a little of each.

‘Well, a pink afro wig, copious amounts of face paint and an alter ego called Martha the Clown can’t help,’ Django reasoned.

‘I.e., get a proper job,’ Pip groaned to Fen whilst ignoring Django. Django turned to Cat who was staring out of the window and way into the night. Her green-grey eyes glinting with the effort of uninvited memories, her sand-blonde hair suddenly framing her face and dripping down over drooping shoulders, her lips parted as if preparing for words she’d never said and wished she had. She looked distant. And sad.

‘She’s in France already,’ Fen whispered to Django, secretly worried that Cat should not be going on her own.

‘Best place for her,’ Pip colluded, secretly pleased that Cat was guaranteed time alone and away.