“Your people do tend to travel,” commented Aunt Amy. “There are a lot of them in Boston, of course. Some of them have even worked their way into good society these days, and are doing a fair amount of charitable work, I will say that for them, so I suppose they’ve learned something from us in their time there. Are you related to the Fitzgeralds?”

“I don’t think so.” Charlie cast a surprised glance at Lulu.

“Maybe the O’Neills?” Aunt Amy thought and then snorted. “I’m supposing you’re not related to those dreadful Kennedys—a pack of crooked Catholics making the world think that’s what Boston’s about. They should have gone back to where they came from, and we’d all have been better off.”

“Actually,” said Charlie quietly, “I don’t know who I’m related to. The name Fitzcharles is a made-up name. My father was dumped into an orphanage, along with his twin sister, when he was a baby, and no one ever found out where they came from. So for all I know, I might be one of the Kennedys after all.”

“Your father was a foundling?” Aunt Amy’s eyebrows went up again. “But I thought your family owned this apartment.”

“We’re doing okay now,” said Charlie. “My father and my aunt were both very clever, got scholarships to schools and university, and worked their way up from there.”

“Extraordinary,” said Aunt Amy. “We can trace our family back to the Mayflower. And you have no idea who your grandfather was.”

“None whatsoever,” said Charlie.

Aunt Amy drew in her breath. “Well, I suppose that sort of thing will happen,” she said, “in a place with all those pubs and no responsibility about birth control. I must say you’re quite nonchalant about it. You don’t even try to keep it a secret.”

“Excuse me!” Suddenly snapping, Sophie slapped her glass down on the table. “Would you please stop being so bloody rude to our friend Charlie? It’s rude to be rude to people anyway, and what you’re saying is just stupid. If my father had been born with the disadvantages Charlie’s father had and got himself to where he has, I’d be incredibly proud of him. I thought Americans were supposed to admire self-made people. If you’re looking for what you’d call good society, you’ve found it, actually, because even though Charlie’s pretty much the richest person I know, even richer than you, believe it or not, she never, ever puts the rest of us down or patronizes us, which gives her perfect manners in my opinion, and much better than yours, quite frankly. And if you want to talk about charitable works, she’s actively invited Lulu and me to live in this fabulous flat—just look at it; it’s awesome—more or less rent-free, for as long as we need, which is an amazing example of charity, I’d say, and she didn’t need to live in Boston or know who her grandparents were to learn how to do it, either. You should be looking at her to see how you could be more like her instead of insulting her, and you can put that in your stuck-up Bostonian pipe and smoke it.”