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preferred frugal lifestyle could most certainly be maintained by the sale of a one-off studio piece every now and then.
    â€˜Oh well,’ she said out loud in the plaguing silence of her room, ‘I still have you and you love me unconditionally, don’t you puss? You give me a hundred per cent, never mind thirty!’ The tabby kneaded her lap in enthusiastic camaraderie before absent-mindedly springing his claws, driving them deep into Morwenna’s thigh. She gasped with the shock and the hurt of it, hurling the animal off her lap, rubbing her thigh hard. The cat slunk reproachfully to the window-sill where he knocked over a photograph of William and gazed defiantly away from her.
    â€˜You and him both.’
    William arrived back at Peregrine’s Gully at midnight. He felt wretched because he knew he had used Morwenna, and thereby abused her. He cursed his conscience for having returned only when his testosterone had levelled. He cursed testosterone. The humming girl was far from his mind, as was the echoing urn in a river of red. Going to the side of the cottage, he went directly to the studio. Barbara, a little bleary, was none the less delighted to see him and chewed her cud thoughtfully as he fetched a block of terracotta clay and began to knead and wedge it. Pulling it towards him and then thrusting it away, he worked the clay until the wetness had gone and a cross section revealed no air pockets, just a smooth dark red-brown slab. Good enough to eat. My, he was starving. It was gone one in the morning and he was cold; the hunger that he had used as a pretext to Morwenna now gnawed at his stomach and his soul.

FOUR
    T hough Chloë’s entire effects would have taken but a couple of hours to pack, it really did not seem an appropriate activity for Christmas Day. It could wait. Tomorrow, perhaps; Boxing Day after all. The easiest way for Chloë to block out the lack of Jocelyn was to travel backwards and pore over memories of Christmases past. Yuletide celebrations at her godmother’s had been peppered with good cheer and sumptuous refreshments, and peopled by the most colourful of souls. Chloë customarily took a place in the background, happily overshadowed by the mosaic of eccentricities that surrounded her. She was oddly comfortable with her shyness when at Jocelyn’s, surrounded by a host of fantastic characters scattered liberally through the house. There was the white witch, the man with the panama and the macaw, the Russian with the balalaika, the ageing French actress. But best of all, the septuagenarians, Peregrine and Jasper; made up to the nines and immaculately coiffured. (‘We’re the
real
Queens of England,
we
should be on the telly at three, don’t you think?’) Some called her Cadwallader, the white witch absent-mindedly called her Cleo, Peregrine and Jasper called her ‘Clodders’ as they had since she was small. She did not mind at all.
    Chloë would watch with awe as Jocelyn swirled around her guests, distributing drink and food, compliments and witticisms with grace laced with abandon. Eyes dark with kohl bought in Petra, enviable cheekbones dusted with rouge from Paris and nut-brown skin bathed in Mitsuko, Jocelyn breezed about enveloped in velvet or swathed in chiffon, bejewelled extravagantly, bestowing on all her immense gift of effortless hospitality. Everyone was swept along on the tide of her countenance. Every so often and without making a scene, she would swoop down beside Chloë, usually squeezing next to her on the armchair to lavish kisses and furtive winks and nudges; ‘I’m Jocelyn jostling!’ she would pip in her ear. Chloë felt treasured indeed.
    Mr and Mrs Andrews had been there too, ensconced in Notting Hill, in Jocelyn’s glorious house. With pride of place over a
faux
-Elizabethan fireplace, they looked benevolently down on all from the gilt-edged confines of their elegant world. Of course, it was