Henry joined them, turning the Henry-beast to face his wife. They were all expectant: they wanted her to speak. Presumably she was meant to use the Toby jug. She lifted it, the pottery cool in her hands, rough at the lip where the glaziery stopped. The Toby-woman’s mouth could not be manipulated, but Joan could bob the jug up and down as she talked.

‘Well,’ she began, then stopped. Her voice was meant to change, wasn’t it? Only Henry’s had stayed the same. Poor transparent Henry. He didn’t get the joke. She was only just beginning to get it herself.

She pushed her tongue down and narrowed her throat and aspirated hard to get a wheezy sort of sound, like her mother in the later stages of emphysema – a sound she’d never forgotten, but never attempted to reproduce. What she wanted to say was how glad she was to have them all home for Christmas, and that although a Chinese takeaway wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind – it was meant to be lamb, she’d got a very good lamb shank from the butcher’s – that really didn’t matter, because they were all together, and that’s what counts. But what issued from her mouth were wheezing vowels, long and painful, with no stops, no consonants, in between. The family was still watching, but they looked dismayed.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ the Tessa-monster asked.

‘She’s lost her voice,’ said the Neal-sock.

‘I haven’t,’ Joan insisted, ‘I’m talking,’ but the words came out as more wheezing, which they all ignored.

‘What should we do?’

‘Where could it be?’

‘Has she swallowed it?’

‘Yes, yes!’ It was Suzanne, on Claire’s arm, who rose from the table. ‘She must have swallowed her voice. We’ll have to look for it.’

Taking up one of the table knives, Claire advanced.

A SOURCE

The next editor of the university newspaper was chosen each year by a panel made up of the current editor, deputy editor, managing editor, news editor and cultural editor of the paper, the current president of the Students’ Union and his or her press officer, the current president of the Journalism Society, plus any number of undeclared presences. No formal applications were invited. The criteria, if they existed, were undisclosed. Nominations would be made at the start of Trinity term, and by the end of it someone would be anointed. There was a rumour that the favourite would be whoever delivered the best story in that narrow window, and looking back through the archive it was possible to see that the appointment was more often than not preceded by a scoop.