‘A leakage, a leakage that has lately started in our region but is spreading beyond. People taking in different air, drinking Thames water, inhaling certain dirts, people from Chelsea, from Kensington, from Knightsbridge and the city have fallen to heap illness. There has been great distress and many fingers have been pointed at the Iremonger family. And so we have had to tell them how to protect themselves. The disease, like any other, does not affect everyone. There is a way to safeguard against it. It has been discovered that the disease passes by a person who keeps close to them an objectified person. It will not turn them object as long as that person keeps that object beside them, or has it to hold now and then – to be in proximity is normally enough. There is a way of connecting a person of flesh and a person of object. A portion – a mere crumb shall suffice – of the object person must be dissolved into liquid form and then injected into the flesh person, and a drop of blood of the flesh person be absorbed into the object person. Thereafter, these two must be kept relatively close to each other, then the flesh person shall be safe from the foul illness, but only if he keeps his particular object about him.’

‘Our birth objects!’

‘Indeed, young Clod, our birth objects.’

‘And so that, oh heavens, is why it is Thomas Knapp that … but then … James Henry! Then he was a person! Who was James Henry?’

‘Someone, no one, it doesn’t matter. You matter, Clod, James Henry does not. Uncle Idwid is not young any more. And so we need you, a new Listener, to hear which objects have … had a history, shall we say. To separate the mere object from the talking object. To keep us safe.’

‘I wish very much to return James Henry Hayward to his family.’

‘Clod, Clod, you may not.’

‘No, Grandfather, I insist on returning him.’

‘Birth objects and their holders, Clod, over time, over generations, in this great family of Iremongers, have developed strangely together. As they have grown together it has been discovered that one or the other must remain an object. Should you return your plug to its family–’

‘His family.’

‘… you should very likely become an object yourself. Should you let your plug get the better of you, it might well be James Henry Hayward carrying a Clodius Iremonger in his waistcoat pocket.’

‘What am I to do?’

‘Look after him, perhaps. Treat him kindly.’

‘I feel sick.’