‘You shall do a deal more than that, for that is not half enough. You will start again this very day, this very moment. A new chapter! You must give your every thought to the family. Every little inch of you, Clodius, is for the Iremongers. You have a talent, I am told. And it is right that you do, it is exactly correct that Ayris’s son should have a talent. You have the breeding, Clodius. But you have much yet to do to be worthy of your blood, Clodius Iremonger. You must love it, love it, love that blood. Do you, Clodius? Do you love it?’

‘Yes, Granny,’ I mumbled, ‘it is good blood, is it not?’

‘The best! None better! Not even the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas can boast such liquid. Their blood is thin enough stuff. Ours is thicker. You cannot escape your blood, Clodius. Try it and it will go wrong in you, turn against your family and your own body shall go foul and fester. I know an Iremonger, a lesser Iremonger, struck out on his own. And do you know what happened to him?’

‘No, Granny, I do not.’

‘His own legs went septic on him. He puffed up with pus.’

‘Poor fellow.’

‘There are great secrets hidden in our blood. Deep mysteries. You cannot escape your blood.’

‘No, Granny.’

Tic! Tic! Tic!

‘Do you know why I chose a plug for you, Clodius?’

‘I do not, Granny.’

‘Because, Clodius, it all depends on you. Your family’s fortune rests on your little shoulders, did you know that? No, no, I should not think you do. It’s been kept from you for a good while now. Too long, I thought. You, like any of the great Iremongers, have a particular way with things. One in every generation or so has usually bubbled up with it, with some particular gift, and they have always kept us going. For there are many beyond here that want us crushed. Your perpetual screaming as an infant marked you out so very early. Personally, I wanted you drowned at birth for what you had done to me. But Umbitt would not have it, and so you lived. You lived and you grew – grew badly – and here you are now in trousers and being sent away from here. I gave you a plug, Clodius Iremonger, as your particular object because, blood of mine, you shall do one of two things. You shall, like a plug, keep us in, keep us safe, be a barrier between us and the threatening sinkhole. Or, conversely, you shall, like a plug that is pulled out, let us fall and tumble away, let us flow out to nothing, let us flood and gush and drip and be all gone!’

She paused for effect. Tic! Tic! Tic! Are the clocks, I wondered, are the clocks getting louder?