But could not shut out his own heart.

‘What is it?’ his mother asked very quickly on coming in.

‘Ah, you have opened the letters! I am so glad! Did you find anything of interest?’

Did he!

Mrs Polkinghorn saw that it had happened.

‘Charles,’ she said ‘we must not give way.’

She was trembling, though.

As for Charles Polkinghorn, the walls had started screeching.

When she bore down on him, her face had become a circular saw, teeth whirling, eyes blurred into the steel disc.

He screamed back.

‘Darling,’ she cried, ‘what has been done to us? We must, we must be strong!’

After that, they were seated on the sofa, their knees trembling in the same piece. He, no longer so very frightened. Crying, though, because he had forgotten how to stop. By now she had compressed her face into a lump of the marshmallow he used to love, and even now he might have popped it into his mouth, if the white mass had not been smeared so palpably with blood.

He continued crying for all they had forfeited, or never found.

‘Strong, strong!’ Mrs Polkinghorn commanded.

Was this her son? This bunch of twigs she held in her hands? She could almost have snapped the brittle stuff.

But caught sight: the old, slanting teeth set in the remnants of her own face.

‘Remember, remember,’ she uttered, fainter, ‘I shall always be at your side.’

It did not stop him.

Though he did, at least, remember. She was standing at the foot of the stairs. In white satin. Remember, she said, Charles, as he slowly descended, paying out the smooth rail through his hand, remember you are of an age where you must not open letters. Other people’s affairs are their own. Besides, she added, you might discover something to hurt you. Always remember that.

Remumber. Oh, Mum, Mum, Mum, oh, Mummy!

‘I shall help you,’ his mother was saying, ‘if you will let, if you will trust me.’

She was holding his head against her brooch. Sapphires were threatening to gouge his eye.

‘Oh, yes! Yes, yes!’ he cried, or mumbled.

Descending still farther on the spiral, into the remoter, satiny depths, he stooped to pick up her voice, its shell. Isn’t he an angel? Look, Dickie! A cherub off a palace ceiling! He is mine! My angel! Oh, delicious persuasions! And when she touched, flooding him with satin.

‘Charles! CHARLES!’ Ursula Polkinghorn had begun to rattle.

‘Oh, God help us!’ she called.

If Charles had been less involved, he might have heard the pennies drop. But must push past, even deeper, past the sapphires and the wrinkles, in search of darkness.

‘Oh, horrible! Oh, Charles!’

As soon as he began to nuzzle at her, Mrs Polkinghorn threw him off. How did she deserve? Ever! Her beastly, her unnatural child!

The Woman who wasn’t Allowed to Keep Cats

By the time the Hajistavri reached the Alexious’ door they were in a state of petulance, if not actual anger.