She stares at it in distaste.

“Throw it. It won’t hold any more Smoke.”

He nods, closes his fist on the candy.

“Where do you have it from?”

“Mother. The government produces it, or rather there’s a special factory that has a government contract. It used to be that it was a big secret. Only very few people were issued them, people in certain positions. Churchmen, for one. Government officials.”

“Teachers.”

“Yes. For emergencies; and to ward off infection when they are dealing with common folk. But Mother says that this is changing. Beasley and Son sold the monopoly, and the new owners, they are selling sweets, secretly of course, to whoever can pay. A black market. Mother says they even sell to commoners. Soon, I suppose, greengrocers will sell it, along with tea and soap.”

Charlie whistles. It sounds brighter than he means it to. “Or along with their liquorice and nuts! But this is good, isn’t it? It means people can fight their Smoke. Suppress it.”

She grows angry, fierce, her eyebrows knotting.

“It’s a sin, is what it is. A crime.”

She stares at him as though she holds him guilty too. In his fist the spent sweet lies sticky against his skin.

“I better go.”

Livia does not stop him. All she says, as he walks through the door, is “Merry Christmas.”

He turns.

“Already? I lost track of time.”

“Christmas Eve at any rate. Mother grew up abroad. She keeps to Continental traditions. We’ll have a formal dinner, followed by carols at the tree.”

“I have no present for you.”

“It isn’t expected.”

Her voice, when she says it, is cold and distant. It is as though the morning never happened.

ф

“Smoke is madness,” Charlie repeats to himself on the way down the stairs. “That’s why she is how she is. She is her father’s daughter. He lost his reason. So she is afraid.”

The thought is still with him when he enters the guest room and finds Thomas straddling the threshold of the open veranda door, looking gaunt and sickly in the early-morning light. Rain has soaked one sleeve of his nightshirt and glued it to his arm.

Charlie closes the door behind himself before he speaks.

“I know what sweets are. And I understand Smoke.”

Thomas looks over, water streaming down his face.

“I know more than that, Charlie. I’ve read the Bible.”

They sit down on the floor shoulder to shoulder, and explain.

LIVIA