‘Yes, well, I’m beginning to think we’ve made a terrible mistake moving here.’

All the warmth drained from the room. Maurice and Mrs P-W shivered, suddenly. Inexplicably.

A woman stood right behind them, watching them. She was wearing a long blue dress with yellow shoes, and had an angry, shrivelled face.

Parvenus.

She did not like them, or their ridiculous name.

Penze-Weedell.

Both of them, as if drawn by a magnet, turned their heads.

All they saw was the flashing Christmas tree, and the cards on the mantelpiece above the electric dancing flames of the simulated coal fire in the fake grate.

‘Has the heating gone off?’ she said, giving her husband a sharp look. ‘Are you economizing again?’

He shivered again. ‘No, it’s set for all day.’ He hurried through into the kitchen and then into the utility room. The boiler was blazing away.

4

Friday 14 December

‘Oh my God!’ Emily Danes said. ‘I hadn’t realized just how hideous it is – daylight sort of masked it!’ She stared out from the front window of the living room, through the falling darkness, at number thirty-six. At the illuminated Santa’s grotto in the front garden, complete with Santa rocking from side to side and with flashing lights for eyes, and a string of elves frozen in mid-dance. ‘Can you imagine, we’re going to have to look at this until – the sixth of January, isn’t it, the date when you have to take decorations down or it’s unlucky? God!’

‘The curtains shouldn’t be too long.’

Emily leaned against a packing case and looked at her checklist. ‘Right. I’ve rung the window cleaner we were recommended and he’s going to try to fit us in before Christmas. He asked if we’d mind him coming at the weekend, this once – what do you think?’

‘Be good to get them done, they’re quite grimy.’

‘Probably dust from the construction going on all around us.’ She peered at the list again. ‘I’ve called Sky and that’s sorted. I’ve also gone on the council’s website and found what day the bins go out – recycling is every other Monday, but it’s all going to change after the New Year, so I’ll have to check again then. Oh, and there’s a post office counter in the village shop that’s open to eight p.m.!’

‘That’s better than in town.’

‘I know, brilliant!’

‘And I’ve finally found the stopcock,’ Jason said.

‘You’d better show me.’

‘Tomorrow, when it’s daylight. It’s out down the side of the house behind the bin store.’

‘OK.’

‘Right, time for a celebration, methinks!’

‘You said the curtains shouldn’t be too long – how long did she say?’

‘I spoke to the woman a few days ago – she thought about a month,’ he said, coming back in with two champagne flutes. He set them down on the glass coffee table in front of the two huge sofas they had splashed out on, and which were put together in an L-shape.

‘God, we’re going to have to stare at that awful stuff across the road right through Christmas until they take them down.’