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her by the toppling statuary without, and faded damask, cobwebs, dusty cornices and unpeeling wallpaper within.
    A gallery ran round the hall, giving opportunities for a mad sort of architecture, as if the upper part of the house had been planned solely for games of hide-and-seek, for evasions and sudden encounters. Rooms and landings lay at different levels and staircases ran off to right and left, some ascending, some burrowing down again.
    Margaret could not merely open a door; she flung it open, and then, what was more, crossed the room in front of Cassandra and flung open the windows one after another, as if hoping to dilute the mouldy ancient smell of the place. She explained about the bathroom (‘down the little staircase on your left and then across the half-landing and under the archway on the right’), so that Cassandra could never have followed the instructions, and then she said ‘I shall see about the tea,’ and left her to confront her own small label-plastered trunk (for her father had visited some cultural centre every summer holiday), and to inspect the Edwardian bed of brass and pleated silk.
    She crossed the threadbare, pink-wreathed carpet and looked out of the window, learning her new limits, like a prisoner going for the first time into his cell. Below her, outside, agoose wandered through the ruins of an old rose garden, walking between the weeds with a sedate air.
    ‘What are you looking at?’
    A little girl leaned against the door, looking in from the dark landing.
    ‘Are you Sophy?’
    ‘Yes. What were you looking at?’
    As Cassandra came towards her, so that she could see more plainly the child’s pale, violin-shaped face, a door opened suddenly downstairs, releasing the sound of voices in angry dissent, voices which separated, echoed across the hall and, finally, trailed away.
    When Margaret came upstairs, Cassandra was standing beside Sophy in the doorway. They had looked at one another, but scarcely spoken.
    Margaret’s forehead was flushed, but whether from anger or the stairs it was not easy to say.
    ‘The tea is ready,’ she called.
    She paused with her hand on the bannister and looked up at them.
    ‘Ah, there you are, Sophy. Bring Miss Dashwood down for some tea. Where is Marion? Where is your father?’
    ‘The neuralgia came again.’
    Margaret gave a sharp sigh. ‘Come along, then!’ She disappeared down the stairs as if she could not wait longer for her tea.
    ‘Come along, then,’ Sophy echoed.

CHAPTER THREE
     
    ‘If you discover anything muttering in dark corners, it is Nanny and you must not mind her,’ said Margaret.
    ‘Hush dear,’ said the oldish lady, still sitting among the Ryvita crumbs.
    ‘She wasn’t muttering at you just now,’ Sophy pointed out.
    ‘How did your Latin lesson go, dear?’
    Sophy shrugged. ‘It has gone,’ she said simply.
    ‘And your daddy has toothache?’
    Margaret laughed with pleasure.
    ‘A perfectly civil question,’ said her mother.
    ‘Marion does not merely have toothache.’
    ‘I thought it was toothache … that was all …’
    ‘Of course it is toothache.’
    ‘And he won’t be called “Daddy”,’ said Sophy.
    ‘He is your father, isn’t he? Surely …’
    Margaret said: ‘Truth is stranger than fiction.’ It was only
just
said, as she took up a filled cup and passed it to Cassandra. ‘Don’t
you
think truth is stranger than fiction, Miss Dashwood?’ Her tone was engaging, artificial.
    ‘I think we have to believe things that happen in real life, which we could not believe in a book,’ said Cassandra, who didn’t know what she was being asked.
    ‘Exactly what I meant,’ Margaret said quietly.
    ‘Take a spoonful of Bemax on that,’ said her mother.
    ‘On what? Me? Oh, Sophy! Sophy, eat your Bemax or mushrooms will grow inside you.’
    Sophy imagined thick shelves of fungus branching out from her ribs, and sprinkled Bemax on her jam.
    ‘You are having two teas.’
    ‘Yes, Aunt Tinty.’
    ‘What