There was an audible susurration of surprise in the room.

Dave muttered: “Blimey!”

Beep said: “I like your grandmother.”

People were not used to hearing this subject discussed so openly, especially by a woman. Dave grinned. Good old Grandmam, still making trouble after all these years.

“Don’t mutter, you’re not really shocked,” she said crisply. “You all know there are men who love men. Such people do no harm to anyone—in fact, in my experience they tend to be gentler than other men—yet what they do is a crime according to the laws of our country. Even worse, plainclothes police detectives pretending to be men of the same sort entrap them, arrest them, and put them in jail. In my opinion this is as bad as persecuting people for being Jewish or pacifist or Catholic. So my main campaign here in the House of Lords will be homosexual law reform. I hope you will all wish me luck. Thank you.”

She got an enthusiastic round of applause. Dave figured that almost everyone in the room genuinely did wish her luck. He was impressed. He thought jailing queers was stupid. The House of Lords went up in his estimation: if you could campaign for that sort of change here, maybe the place was not completely ludicrous.

Finally Ethel said: “And now, in honor of our American relatives and friends, a song.”

Evie went to the front and Dave followed her. “Trust Grandmam to give them something to think about,” Evie murmured to Dave. “I bet she’ll succeed, too.”

“She generally gets what she wants.” He picked up his guitar and strummed the chord of G.

Evie began immediately:

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,

Most of the people in the room were British, not American, but Evie’s voice made them all listen.

What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,

Dave thought nationalist pride was bollocks, really, but despite himself he felt a little choked up. It was the song.

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight

O’er the ramparts we’d watch’d were so gallantly streaming?

The room was so quiet that Dave could hear his own breathing. Evie could do this. When she was onstage, everyone watched.

And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,

Dave looked at his mother and saw her wipe away a tear.

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

They clapped and cheered. Dave had to give his sister credit: she was a pain in the neck at times, but she could hold an audience spellbound.

He got another ginger beer, then looked around for Beep, but she was not in the room. He saw her older brother, Cameron, who was a creep. “Hey, Cam, where did Beep go?”

“Out for a smoke, I guess,” he said.

Dave wondered if he could find her. He decided to go and look. He put down his drink.