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affronting everyone in the process and accidentally closing the subject for ever. Kath, in particular, had kept her secrets close to her chest, and was mortified by the idea that her grandchildren might realize she had been born out of wedlock.
    It seemed obvious to everyone that my parents did not belong together. Bill’s mother got the ball rolling by failing to attend her only son’s wedding and avoiding all contact with her daughter-in-law. Kath took her new husband to her mother’s house in Brighton, where her nervous beau committed so many cringe-worthy faux pas that he could never bring himself to go back again. Kath then went to
his
mother’s house to repair the ill-will, only to rush from the front step with her nose in a handkerchief, sobbing.
    Early on, a sense of buyer’s remorse settled over my parents’ marriage. During their courtship Bill had presented himself as an open-hearted man of action, but he turned out to be a mummy’s boy who spent three work-nights out of five with his parents, leaving his wife alone at home. She, on the other hand, failed to live up to his strong-willed mother, and was considered by their side to be too high-minded. There was a general consensus that if she had Put Her Foot Down early on, things would have worked out satisfactorily. But she didn’t, and they didn’t, and so Kath and Bill remained padlocked together for fifty years of mutual disappointment and recrimination.
    For me, this was where the early appeal of burying one’s nose in a book came in.
    When we reached Reynold’s Place, where William and Mrs Fowler lived, my mother tidied my hair and pushed me towards the front door.
    ‘You knock,’ she said, knowing that I was awkward in formal situations. ‘I’m sure your grandmother will be pleased to see you.’
    I knocked and waited. A thumping sound grew inside the still house. The great black door creaked open. Balanced on an ebony stick, a great navy-blue dress and coat appeared before me, topped with a stern face and a wicker hat like an upturned bucket.
    ‘You’re late,’ said Mrs Fowler, stepping aside to let me in. ‘Go into the front room and don’t touch a single thing, while I have words with your mother.’
    She did not approve of kissing. As I passed, she snatched the book from under my arm. ‘You won’t be needing that,’ she told me. ‘It’ll be full of germs and bad ideas.’ She left it on the rainy step outside.
    There were no books in the house at Reynold’s Place because books did not look nice enough to be displayed, and in Mrs Fowler’s eyes did not reveal themselves as status symbols to visiting neighbours. Books developed the imagination, and imagination was the enemy of hard work. Everyone in Mrs Fowler’s family worked very hard until they dropped dead. In Mrs Fowler’s experience, ‘imaginative’ people were usually neurasthenic girls who cried a lot and proved useless to themselves and others. They moped, or were hysterical and took to their beds on rainy days. There was a word for imaginative boys, too, but it wasn’t mentioned in polite company. If I had turned up with welding equipment instead of a book, Mrs Fowler and I might have got off on the right foot.
    I weaved my way carefully through the fragile knickknacks, gewgaws and whatnots in the polish-squeaky front room, and perched on the guest chair in the corner, resigning myself to a very long afternoon. On my last visit I had dared to open the cabinet of not-very-curious curiosities to handle a china dachshund, only to watch in horror as it slipped through my fingers and snapped its head off on the floor. Balancing the head back on, I furtively replaced the guillotined dog, and there it stayed in the cabinet for years, awaiting discovery and retribution.
    After that, each trip to my grandparents’ house was like being put on trial for a crime you had denied knowledge of committing.
    1 For international readers, a light cake of baked batter, tricky to cook at