“Which wasn’t often.” Margaret stubs out her cigarette and lights another. Her mouth is pale, she isn’t wearing lipstick. There’s a stirring in the region of her lap, and she lowers her hand to stroke some object I presume is Tuxedo. Settles back an inch or two and stares at Annie. “He was the sweetest boy, you know. After Mummy died, Granny and her sister moved in to take care of us. Of course, the war was still on, and they’re the sort of thrifty Scots who light the fires only when the temperature gets below freezing. If we complained about the cold, they would tell us to put on a jumper and run around the halls. I don’t think I even knew what it was to be warm until Johann started inviting us down to Germany during the summers.” She pauses to drag on her cigarette. “But Benedict, you know, he never would complain, not the least noise.”

“I’m not surprised.”

Margaret flicks the ash from her cigarette into a nearby ashtray. “I remember he was such an awfully big baby, but then he got so skinny after Mummy died. Whenever he got sick, I thought he was finished. But they’re stronger than they look, you know. Babies.”

“Are they? Or just him?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know, would I? He’s the only baby I’ve ever properly encountered. Annie? More tea, if you don’t mind.”

Annie carries over a fresh pot, which she pours first for me and then for Margaret. As she lifts the spout and turns away, she mutters, “More tea and less cigarettes, if you ask me.”

“But nobody did ask you, Annie,” says Margaret, so crisp.

I look for the sugar and can’t find any. Instead, there’s a pot of honey. I pour in the milk, stir in the honey. “Maybe he had to be strong. Maybe it’s just bred into him, from the beginning. Maybe it’s a good thing the house was so cold.”

“We’d like to think so, wouldn’t we? We’d like to think he can endure it. The alternative’s too awful to contemplate.”

Annie brings me a pair of eggs, cooked together so that the yolks are like a pair of yellow eyes regarding me from a white face. Also brown toast with butter.

“Why does Mrs. Thorpe get two eggs, Annie?” Margaret asks. “And all that butter on her toast, it’s obscene.”

For an instant, Annie meets my gaze. “No reason,” she says softly, and returns to the range. Margaret glances at the clock on the opposite wall and drums her fingers against the saucer. A pair of black ears pops up from her lap. An inquisitive feline face, interested in the egg that remains on Margaret’s plate.