She was married now to a plasterer, but in some ways she had not changed since she tyrannized the Thirteenth when we were small. Petronius had not known the rest of us in those days, but like everyone for miles around he knew our Victorina.

“How’s my favourite nephew?” I asked, since she was holding her latest pug-faced progeny. He had the wrinkled face and tearful gaze of a hundred-year-old man. He stared at me over her shoulder with visible contempt: barely crawling yet, but he could recognize a fraud.

Victorina shot me a tired look. She knew my heart belonged to Marcia, our three-year-old niece.

My mother sedated Petronius with a casket of raisins while she extracted impertinent facts about his relations with his wife. I managed to get hold of a melon slice, but Victorina’s infant seized the other end. He had the grip of a Liburnian wrestler. We struggled for some minutes, then I gave way to the better chap. The wretch hurled the melon onto the floor.

Sosia watched everything with immense, solemn eyes. I suppose she had never been anywhere where there was so much going on in such good-humoured chaos.

“Hello, Falco!”

“Hello, Sosia!” I smiled, in tones that were meant to lap her body in liquid gold. My sister and mother exchanged a derisory glance. I put one foot on the bench beside Sosia and gazed down with a simmering leer until my mother noticed.

“Get your boot off my bench!”

I took my boot off the bench.

“Little goddess, you and I need a private talk.”

“Whatever you need,” ma informed me, “can be discussed right here.”

Grinning more than I thought necessary, Petronius Longus sat down at the table and leaned his chin on his hands while he waited for me to begin. Everyone knew that I had no idea what I wanted to say.

On several occasions before that, indignant females had described to me the expression on my mother’s face when she met some painted madam with a scented skirt in my rooms. Sometimes I never saw them again. In fairness to my mother, my conquests had included bad mistakes.

“What’s going on here?” my mother had rapped at Sosia when she discovered her during my enforced chat with Pertinax.

“Good morning,” responded Sosia. My mother sniffed. She strode to the bedroom, flung aside the curtain, and weighed up the situation with the camp bed.

“Well! I can see what’s going on! Client?”

“I am not allowed to say,” Sosia said.

My mother replied that she would be the judge of what was allowed. Then she sat Sosia down and gave her something to eat. She has her methods. Pretty soon she had wormed out the whole tale. She demanded what Sosia’s noble mama would think, so Sosia unwisely mentioned having no noble mama. My own sweet parent was appalled.