“Is Morgan lazier than you? Morgan makes his own bed every day, he helps Mirjana with the washing up. When Morgan takes a shower, he cleans the bathroom afterwards, he doesn’t throw his clothes and towel on the floor for someone else to pick up.”

“Yeah, but he can barely read. All he reads is comic books.”

“That’s lazy? That’s on strike?”

“Is your mother French, too?”

“Yes.”

“What’s she do for a living?”

“She’s a brocanteuse.”

“What’s that?”

“She sells things in the market.”

“What, she has, like, a vegetable stall or something?” Artemio screws up his eyes.

“No, she sells old things. Old clothes and old magazines. Things people don’t want anymore she takes and sells.”

“You mean, she’s, like … a ragpicker?” Artemio is utterly appalled. “That’s like—that’s like something out of Oliver Twist. How’d she even meet my dad? Was he, like, throwing out something old, and she asked if she could take it and sell it?” He’s spluttering with laughter, but the thought that his father might have had dealings with such a person obviously disturbs him. “My mum works for a film producer.”

“I know.”

“Her company won an award for a series they made about the Peninsular War.”

“The what?”

“The Pen-in-su-lar War. You know, Napoleon. One of the other times we beat you.”

“I thought Peninsular was a kind of medicine,” Rat mutters to herself.

Artemio roars with triumphant laughter. “I can’t believe we’re related. Don’t they teach you anything in French schools?”

“Artemio, I’m gonna get dressed now.”

Artemio doesn’t budge. He looks down at her complacently. “It’s a good thing we found out about each other,” he remarks. “Otherwise, we might have grown up and got married, without knowing we were brother and sister. I saw a film where that happened: this boy was about to marry a girl, and then at the last minute the priest tells him, Sorry, Jean, you can’t marry that girl, I confessed your dad the night before the Gestapo tortured him to death, and he told me he’d had an affair with that girl’s mum and that she’s actually his illegitimate daughter.”

Rat casts an eye at the clock. “Casse-toi, Artemio, s’il te plaît, Je m’habille. En tout cas, je pense pas qu’il y a grand risque que tu te maries avec la fille d’une, quoi, d’une ragpicker.”

Rat catches the train from Westbourne Park.

Kate’s made her a dentist’s appointment for the exposed nerve on her broken tooth.

Occasion for more shame: the dentist, Kate reported back, had asked could she please get her French dentist to send him her most recent set of X-rays. Rat had been obliged to admit to Kate she couldn’t remember ever having been to a dentist, let alone having X-rays.

Kate, as usual, had simply goggled.