She let my hand go. I returned to the sofa’s edge thinking what a very long time it was since last I was there. The storm was getting loud again, or was it my own heart sprinting, thumping to be out of its cage? I had sworn, and as I swore to my grandmother I had meant it all. I was an Iremonger then, truly an Iremonger, it was all that I had ever known. I should strive every day for the family. But why had Grandmother persisted so, why had she bullied and talked and spent so many words on me; it was as if she knew I doubted. I had doubted, I had for a little. As if she knew everything inside me: my fears for James Henry, my sorrow for the objects, but most of all my feeling for Lucy Pennant, a mere serving girl, a firegrate. Grandmother, all-seeing, was telling me I must put all that away, I must grow up at last. I was trousered now, I was going to the city. I shall not go to the Sitting Room, after all, I told myself, it’s wrong to go to the Sitting Room. I decided at that moment that I should not go.

‘I shall do well, Granny,’ I said at last.

‘You’re a good boy,’ she said.

‘It is very fine to be wearing trousers.’

‘It is, Clodius, indeed it is. Well done. I have something for you before you go, Clodius. For such an Iremonger as you. A little going-away present. A parting gift.’

She pointed to a round table on which rested a small package wrapped in tissue paper and tied up with a ribbon.

‘Take it, child,’ she said, ‘open it up, tell me what you have there.’

I unwrapped the little object. It was a small silver hand mirror.

‘Thank you, Granny,’ I said.

‘It is inscribed,’ she said. ‘Read it to me.’

‘SO THAT I MAY ALWAYS KNOW WHO I AM.’

‘That is it, quite right,’ she said. ‘I was going to give it to you today anyway, though I had no idea quite how appropriate it should be. You shall always know, Clodius, that you are an Iremonger of the best blood.’

‘Thank you, Granny.’

‘It is my pleasure, darling boy. You may go now.’

‘Thank you, Granny. Goodbye, Granny.’

‘So eager to leave your old grandmother? That is youth, is it not, always moving.’

‘Goodbye, Granny.’

‘Goodbye, Clodius, do great things.’

I was at the door then and in an eagerness to be the other side of it and far away from my grandmother and all her things and all her words.

‘Oh, Clodius?’ she called.

‘Yes, Granny,’ I said, very desperate now.

‘I love you.’

Must she say that? Must she nail me for ever to Iremonger property? Yes, yes, she must.

‘I love you, Granny,’ I said.