Over dinner, she and Gillem are extra-polite to each other, but they can’t look each other in the eye. Something’s broken, and he feels worse than a stranger. Kate tries her best to make up the difference, chattering about some outdoor music festival last weekend in August that her sister wants to know if Rat wants to come along to, but all Rat can think is, Why would I still be here in August?

That night, going to sleep, she imagines snuggling up against her mother’s narrow feline slinky body, as she used to years ago. Then she banishes the thought.

Chapter 5

“Why are they staying with us, Mum?”

“They’ve come to visit.” Kate is concentrating on the traffic. She’s driving Artemio home from his friend Noah’s birthday party. Noah’s mother had explained in advance to the other mothers that instead of giving his guests party favors at the end, Noah had chosen to make a small donation in each child’s name to the World Wildlife Fund.

When Kate had relayed this latest piece of Nouveau London sanctimoniousness to her sister, Constance had said, “I’d be a bit more impressed if it was Noah’s daddy’s Christmas bonus they’d decided to give to charity. But no, they have to deprive a few innocent tots of their penny bags of sweets.”

“When are they leaving?” Artemio persists.

“Who?”

“Celia and Morgan. Don’t you find it a bit odd, for years we never even knew they existed, and suddenly they’re, like, living with us, acting like our food’s their food and my toys are theirs? How much longer are they staying?”

This is the question Kate herself is trying not to ask.

It’s not that she doesn’t think Gillem’s daughter is absolutely wonderful. But it’s wearing, coming home from a hard day’s work, and having to make small talk in French all evening with a teenager who would probably much rather be off with kids her own age.

She can see the toll it’s taking on Artemio, never having his house or his parents to himself anymore. There’s a new grimness in his tone when he comes complaining to her that Morgan won’t let him put on the Monty Python DVD because he’s watching football or that Morgan’s left the top off his best fluorescent Magic Marker.

Celia’s mother must be a very strange woman, she reflects, having unloaded her two children on an unknown family, with no apparent concern for how they were getting on and were they ever coming home.

When Kate had tried to let off a little steam to Gillem, he had looked at her in amazement, and said, “What, don’t you like Celia?”

That’s not the point, she’d said.