By an unwritten rule, no one ever spoke of the Crimea or Anton in the house. There was an icy hush.

“Really?” replied my mother with seemingly no emotion.

“Joffy has a parish up at Wanborough these days,” announced Polly, hoping to change the subject. “He’s opened the first GSD church in Wessex. I spoke to him last week; he says that it has been quite popular.”

Joffy was my other brother. He had taken to the faith at an early age and tried all sorts of religions before settling for the GSD.

“GSD?” murmured Mycroft. “What in heaven’s name is that?”

“Global Standard Deity,” answered Polly. “It’s a mixture of all the religions. I think it’s meant to stop religious wars.”

Mycroft grunted again.

“Religion isn’t the cause of wars, it’s the excuse. What’s the melting point of beryllium?”

“180.57 degrees centigrade,” murmured Polly without even thinking. “I think Joffy is doing a grand job. You should call him, Thursday.”

“Maybe.”

Joffy and I had never been close. He had called me Doofus and smacked me on the back of my head every day for fifteen years. I had to break his nose to make him stop.

“If you are calling people why don’t you call—”

“Mother!”

“He’s quite successful now, I understand, Thursday. It might be good for you to see him again.”

“Landen and I are finished, Mum. Besides, I have a boyfriend.”

This, to my mother, was extremely good news. It had been of considerable anguish to her that I wasn’t spending more time with swollen ankles, hemorrhoids and a bad back, popping out grandchildren and naming them after obscure relatives. Joffy wasn’t the sort of person who had children, which kind of left it up to me. In all honesty I wasn’t against the idea of kids, it was just that I wasn’t going to have them on my own. And Landen had been the last man to have remotely interested me as a possible life partner.

“A boyfriend? What’s his name?”

I said the first name that popped into my head.

“Snood. Filbert Snood.”

“Nice name.” My mother smiled.

“Daft name,” grumbled Mycroft. “Like Landen Parke-Laine, come to that. Can I get down? It’s time for Jack Spratt’s Casebook.”

Polly and Mycroft both got up and left us. Landen’s name didn’t come up again and neither did Anton’s. Mum offered me my old room back but I quickly declined. We had argued ferociously when I had lived at home. Besides, I was almost thirty-six. I finished my coffee and walked with my mother to the front door.

“Let me know if you change your mind, darling,” she said. “Your room is the same as it always was.”

If that were true the dreadful posters of my late teenage crushes would still be up on the wall. It was a thought too hideous to contemplate.

10.
The Finis Hotel, Swindon

Miltons were, on the whole, the most enthusiastic poet followers. A flick through the London telephone directory would yield about four thousand John Miltons, two thousand William Blakes, a thousand or so Samuel Coleridges, five hundred Percy Shelleys, the same of Wordsworth and Keats, and a handful of Drydens. Such mass name-changing could have problems in law enforcement. Following an incident in a pub where the assailant, victim, witness, landlord, arresting officer and judge had all been called Alfred Tennyson, a law had been passed compelling each namesake to carry a registration number tattooed behind the ear. It hadn’t been well received—few really practical law-enforcement measures ever are.