Zita threw a damp tea towel over her shoulder. ‘Don’t you think I look spiffing? How Moggy Symington would simply seethe to see me now! I never thought I’d spend the rest of my life washing up. So, Tommy,’ she said, tapping him lightly with the towel. ‘Is there anyone … special in your life?’

Tom thought. ‘At school? There aren’t any girls.’

‘Why should that make a difference? There’s plenty of chaps that like one kind or both. Don’t look so surprised. I have seen something of the world, you know.’

‘No. Nothing like that.’ And outside of school, he hardly went to any parties or anything. It was difficult, living in Hector’s house in the country, whilst his guardian was away all the time. He’d mostly gone for walks, read or watched endless TV shows.

‘You’re a handsome chap, you know.’

Tom blushed.

With a theatrical sigh, Zita replaced the tea towel on the cooking range.

Kit coughed. ‘You watch her,’ he said. It was the clearest thing Tom had yet heard him say.

‘Don’t listen to him. He’s an old stick-in-the-mud.’

Leana’s ears pricked up. She was standing with her paws on the windowsill, looking out across the lawn to the bridge.

‘Do you dance, darling?’ murmured Zita into Tom’s ear. She performed a little jig and then bent her knees and bobbed up and down.

‘Isn’t that a bit old-fashioned?’ said Tom. His experience of dancing so far had been at people’s sixteenth birthdays, which tended to be mostly in the dark and with music that wasn’t anything like this, and where dancing was more a question of throwing yourself around than doing anything that might be called steps. He felt awkward.

‘Oh, anyone can do it,’ she said. ‘Even Kit.’

Kit grunted in reply.

She pulled him by the hand into the hall and lit some candles. There was a gramophone on the floor by the side, and she knelt down and chose a record. Crackly band music boomed around the hall, a trumpet solo dancing up and down the scales. Zita stretched and performed a pirouette, very gracefully. Kit came through and leant against the wall, his silver hair gently shining in the golden light, and the candlelight shone off Zita’s black head, her earrings glittering against her white neck. She turned to Tom with a look of infectious naughtiness.

‘Come, Tommy dear. Dance. Or should I call you Tom-Tom?’

‘Please don’t.’ Tom found he couldn’t help it. She drew him in, and then they were dancing, the music filling Tom in a way he’d never felt before. He stumbled, but Zita didn’t seem to mind, and soon he was swaying and stepping in time with her. The lurcher barked, once, and then again. Zita swooned. Kit said, ‘Watch it.’