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white cloth, and her father sat in his mahogany carver chair at the end of the table. Mrs Brennan had placed her in the usual place, halfway down. The steamed fish looked small on the gold-edged plate, its flesh almost indistinguishable from the white bone china. There was no vegetable other than a small potato because it was Friday and the Vicar favoured fasting. Her father had salmon steak as usual. He was reading, his book lying on the bookrest that stood by his chair. It only needed an eagle to turn into a lectern, thought Hannah.
    The light from the hissing gas lamps caught the elaborate mouldings of the sideboard, the dark shadows hiding the grey dust which Polly the maid could never clean from the sharpened carvings. The huge picture of the stag at bay hung as always on the wall above, looking in the dim light even more as though it was going to snap its wires and plunge onto the tantalus which held her father’s decanters of whisky and brandy. That would make him lose his place, she thought, and ate a small mouthful of fish slowly to make it seem more substantial.
    Venison would be nice, she thought, looking at the stag. Her father had bought it because it seemed a lot of picture for a small amount of money and he liked to think he had picked up a bargain; or so she had heard him tell Grandfather before he died. She was glad her grandfather had been ‘gathered’, as the Vicar would say, because he smelt unpleasant and had hardly any teeth left so that he spat when he talked.
    She took another mouthful. Mother obviously had not told Father about her behaviour because he had said nothing and she had not been banished to her room with no food. Not that this meal would fill her up.
    Her father turned from his book and poured more champagne. He never allowed the cork to pop but eased it from the angled bottle, his lower lip protruding, watching the vapour before pouring. Her fish was almost finished now.
    She watched as he took a sip and then some food before returning to his book. As he chewed his jaw clicked; it always did and as she watched she found her breathing was in time with it. She took another mouthful and then some of the potato but now she was chewing in time too.
    ‘Remember that we do not finish our meals, Hannah. One must never even suggest that we could be hungry. That is a state we do not recognise.’ His eyes flicked towards her and then back to his book.
    ‘Yes, Father,’ she replied, and laid her knife and fork down. But I am hungry, she wanted to say, but knew that it was a different sort of hunger, a poor hunger, that he meant. Did the needle sharpeners eat well before they died, she wondered.
    He had finished his champagne and was leaning back in his chair now, wiping his drooping moustache first with his napkin and then with his finger, smoothing it back into shape so that it fell brown and glistening almost to his chin. She hated his nails; they were long and like those of the witch who had haunted her childhood and brought people poisoned apples. Harry had said that their father kept his nails long to show he didn’t have to do any rough work. Grandfather’s had been the same, he said. She couldn’t remember that, but she could imagine the two men together poring over their clients’ cases, pointing to the important items before advising them to buy property or sue a tradesman.
    Did he know about the needle sharpeners? Perhaps he didn’t, and if she told him he just might think it wrong and forbid the use of needles in his home which would save a few lives; but she knew it was unlikely. She looked down the table at him. His brows were heavy, shading his eyes so that there was never any life in them or, when he looked at her, any love. They frightened her, and made her feel alone. She looked back at her plate.
    ‘Mrs Brennan says that needle sharpeners die by twenty-five. It’s not right, is it?’ It came out in a rush because of those eyes and she wished she had not felt as though