‘I don’t know that I’ll be very good at that.’

‘No.’

‘Could you grow, do you think?’

‘I might,’ I said, ‘I’ll try.’

‘Well then, Cousin Clod, you had better listen to me. If we remain in Heap House after you’re trousered we shall be allotted two rooms and in those two rooms, you and I are to confine ourselves. They may be very small rooms. They may be really only one room with a false wall made of little more than board. That’s what happened to my sister Flippah when she married Cousin Crosspin, but she found that after a while she could move the wall. And the more she despised Crosspin the more she pushed the wall. She stayed in one room, that room was getting bigger and bigger, and he was in the other always decreasing room. In the end he had to sleep standing up. I wonder if we’ll get a moveable wall. Do you fit in a cupboard? I think you would. I hope we get a cupboard. If not you might go under a bed. Upon a mantelpiece? No, you’d be too conspicuous there. Don’t look so miserable.’

‘I am miserable.’

‘I’m lying, you mophead,’ she said, ‘I do lie. I’m going to lie to you. I’m a terrible liar, I can’t stop myself. Never believe a word I say. That’s my advice. I’m doing you a favour telling you that, often people have to work it out for themselves.’

‘Erm,’ I said, then, ‘Thank you.’

‘I’m older than you.’

‘I’m fifteen.’

‘Seventeen.’

‘For six more months.’

‘I don’t love you.’

‘No!’

‘But I am capable of love.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’ve loved a lot in my time.’

‘Yes?’

‘Shall I tell you about it?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m for ever falling in and out of love,’ Pinalippy told me, in very secretive tones. ‘I’m in love at the moment, but not with you. I’m thick with love, but not with you. We’ve been together. We couldn’t stop ourselves, one with the other, leg over leg over leg. What a fumbling! Buttons all over! Hooks and eyes! What panting. All that skin and things! Oh, but it’s hopeless, I’m supposed to marry you.’

‘Cousin Pinalippy?’

‘Cousin Clod?’

‘Are you lying?’

She did not answer that.

‘Are you lying?’ I tried again.

‘Well then,’ she said after a moment, ‘let me see it. Bring it out. Come, come. You know that you should. I’ll have a look at it now. Show me.’

Slowly, carefully, I brought out my James Henry, and laid it flat in my hand, I held it away from her but so that she could see it.

‘A plug is it?’

‘Yes,’ I whispered, ‘a universal plug. It fits most sinks. It’s called James Henry Hayward, that’s the name I hear it saying.’