“Opposed to what?” she said. “Little pink elephants in ballet skirts? Multicolored ballpoint pens? Out-of-season asparagus?”

“Actually,” said Charlie thoughtfully, “I was thinking more in terms of traffic lights.”

Charlie was one of the few people who could return Lulu from a borderline bad mood to a good.

“I think Sophie would make quite a good traffic light,” Lulu told her now. “I can see her getting into it … picking a backstory … deciding on her motivation … flashing … red … yellow … green … red … yellow … green.”

“You’re a strange family,” said Charlie. “Nice. But strange.”

“You invited us to live with you,” said Lulu.

Sophie arrived the next day, in a confusion of cartons of books and cases of clothes; boxes of jewelry and makeup; handbags and shoes; film posters; collages of photographs of herself and her friends; a prop sword; two wigs, one red and curly, one dark and straight; three hair dryers, one of them functional; a sewing machine; and several baskets overflowing with buttons, ribbons, squares of satin, and pieces of lace, transforming the small, light-filled spare room into an exotic gypsy’s tent.

“You’re going to be a mad old lady one day,” said Lulu. “Live in a house with cats and lace doilies and china figurines, and little children will be terrified to come and visit you.”

“They’ll be dying to come and visit me,” said Sophie. “I’ll be a world-famous actress, and young girls will sit at my feet, begging me for stories and kicking themselves because they never saw my Rosalind. Jamie, you are a superstar and a top banana, and I love you to pieces forever.”

“I think this is the last of it.” Jamie staggered through the door carrying a box of theater programs topped with an elderly Padding-ton Bear. He was a tall, broad-shouldered young man with kind brown eyes under a mop of unruly hair; collapsing onto the small single bed under the window, his large form dwarfing its narrow frame, he stared in masculine befuddlement at the array of girlish accoutrements that littered the scrubbed pine floor. “Where did you put all this at Esme’s place, is what I’d like to know.”

“I have strange magical powers that make large items shrink to fit a tiny space.” Sophie surveyed the room, her nose wrinkled critically. “Although I probably kept most of it in the basement,” she conceded after a moment. “Very useful, that basement.”

“Well, there’s no basement here, young Soph,” said Lulu. “Just Charlie’s room, my room, your room, and the communal bits downstairs. And your stuff stays up here, okay? All of it.”

“Yes, Mum.” Sophie dropped her shoulders to a servile hunch. “Please, Mum, if I works ever so ’ard at polishing the grates, may Mr. MacNichol take me out walking on my Sunday off? We ’as an understanding, Mum.”

“We has that, Mum,” Jamie assured her soberly. “And I’ll see the girl right, I promise. There shall be no hanky-panky, you may rest assured of that.”