The flip-flop shuffle of down-at-heel slippers came up the stairs and along the gallery towards them. A second later the mass of Rose’s bulk filled the doorway. She jerked her head at her half-brother and, with surprising speed, he was on his way.

‘Another time, then,’ he winked at Chloe and vanished.

Rose eased herself down on the foot of the bed and rested her podgy hands on her spread knees. The two women smiled.

‘Still not quite sure about it, eh?’ Rose asked. Chloe took off her jacket and stood stroking the fur absently.

‘Not a hundred per cent,’ she admitted. ‘Or even fifty. Sometimes it feels like a crazy decision to have made, three years up here reading George Eliot and trying to make ends meet on a grant. Not that it isn’t perfect to be at Follies House,’ she added warmly.

Rose chuckled flatly and her little eyes flickered over the diamonds in Chloe’s ears, the discreet but heavy gold chain around her neck and the supple, rust suede of her tunic dress. ‘Don’t tell me that girls like you ever have to manage on a grant,’ she murmured. ‘And you’ll enjoy it here, mark my words. All kinds of people to meet, for a start. Different from your London ad men.’

‘I hope so,’ countered Chloe fervently.

‘Look at me,’ Rose went on. ‘I just have this house, nothing else. But enough goes on here to keep me looking forward to tomorrow.’ As she winked at Chloe she looked, for an instant, very like her half-brother. ‘So long as I choose the right people to live with me here at Follies, I have everything I need in these four walls. Which is just as well, because where could I go outside with a face and figure like mine?’ The white hands fluttered vaguely over the forbidding fleshy mass. Chloe could do no more than turn the talk with a question.

‘Who else lives here now? Since Colin Page’s sister left?’

Rose’s face brightened in anticipation. ‘Ah. All new this term. You, dear, of course. A little mite called Helen, who you shall meet in one second, unless my predatory young cousin has swept her out of the house already. And by the end of the week there’ll be a pretty love called Pansy. Such a beautiful name, isn’t it? There’s just the three of you. I think you’ll make such an interesting combination.’ Rose’s fingers knitted across the mound of her stomach as she nodded happily at Chloe. Just for the moment she looked like a complacent puppet-mistress with her pretty dolls on sticks, waiting for the show to start. The idea amused Chloe rather than alarmed her. Why shouldn’t Rose live a little through her lodgers, after all?

The landlady heaved herself to her feet and padded to the door.