The festivities extended into the wee hours of the morning. Everyone, including Mrs. Whitlock, consumed a shocking quantity of spirits. By three a.m. some of the couples had slipped off to their rooms. Mr. Whitlock was dozing in his overstuffed chair. Others danced mellowly to the strains of waltz music.

Maxine was unfazed by these sights. Her attentions were focused on two tasks; the first was struggling to fight off the effects of too much drink (she wanted very much to keep her wits about her), and the second was to find out where Mrs. Whitlock had disappeared to.

It had been well over an hour since she had eased her husband into his favourite chair and collected the champagne flutes. She’d escaped into the kitchen but had yet to return. Maxine almost managed to trick herself into believing the foolish theory that the old woman must have retired for the night. She recalled the shape in the cabin, the dirt, the heat, the misshapen mirror…

“Why don’t we turn in,” Xavier whispered to her, pulling her attention from the kitchen door that she’d been waiting to see swing open for the entirety of their waltz. “Let’s go have our own party upstairs.”

Maxine looked at her husband, nodded, kissed his mouth. “I’ll be right up,” she growled.

Xavier gave her his usual telltale grin. He began loosening his tie before he’d even exited the sitting room. He bade none of his family goodnight.

When she was reasonably confident that everyone remaining was either too tired, too distracted or too drunk to notice her, she pushed against the swinging door and moved through the darkened kitchen.

Again, there was light guttering from the little cabin in the hedge; again, there was a manic fluttering of shadows, like a murder of crows in flight.

Maxine exited the great house and snuck up on the cabin.

Peering in through the dirty window exposed her to a sight so startling, so raw, that Maxine’s brain could only process it in fragments. The flame of the lone candle jittered from the motions occurring in the room it illuminated. Mrs. Whitlock stood bent at the hips, naked as she’d been at birth, gripping the sides of the floor length mirror, which had also lost its covering. The old woman appeared to be watching herself in the glass. Her silver mane now hung loose and flowing. Sweat glistened on the soft padding of her back. Her pendulous breasts swung in rhythm with her rutting.