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any less,' she sighed.
    'Law of physics,' Reggie said.
    . T he rest of the house was very tidy and decorated with tasteful thmgs -rugs and lamps and ornaments. A different class of ornament from. Mum's collections of thimbles and miniature teapots tha t de t h* . '
    Spl e t elr SIze, took up valuable space in the Gorgie flat.
    The Hunters' house was Victorian and although it had every modern comfort it still had all its original fireplaces and doors and cornices, which Dr Hunter said was a miracle. The front door had coloured glass panels, starbursts ofred, snowflakes ofblue and rosettes of yellow that cast prisms of colour when the sun shone through. There was even a full set of servants' bells and a back staircase that had allowed the servants to scurry around unseen. 'Those were the days,' Mr Hunter said and laughed because he said if he had been alive when the house was built he would have been making fires and blacking boots, 'And you, too, probably, Reggie,' while 'Joanna' would have been 'swanning around upstairs like Lady Muck' because her family came from money.
    'It's all gone,' Dr Hunter said when Reggie looked at her enquiringly.
    'Unfortunately,' Mr Hunter said.
    'Bad investments, nursing-home bills, squandered on trifles,' Dr Hunter said, as if the getting and spending of money was meaningless. 'My grandfather was rich but profligate, apparently,' she said.
    'And we are poor but honest,' Mr Hunter said.
    'Apparently,' Dr Hunter said.
    Actually, Dr Hunter admitted one day, there had been some money left and she had used it to buy this 'very, very expensive house'. 'An investment,' Mr Hunter said. 'A home,' Dr Hunter said.
    The kitchen was Reggie's favourite room. You could have fitted the whole of Reggie's Gorgie flat into it and still had room for swinging a few elephants if you were so inclined. Surprisingly, Mr Hunter liked cooking and was always making a mess in the kitchen. 'My creative side,' he said. 'Women cook food because people need to eat,' Dr Hunter said. 'Men cook to show off.'
    There was even a pantry, a small, cold room with a flagged floor and stone shelves and a wooden door that had a pattern of cut-out hearts on the panels. Dr Hunter kept cheese and eggs and bacon in there, as well as all her tinned and dried goods. 'I should make jam,' she said guiltily in the summer. 'A pantry like this begs for homemade jam.'Now that it was nearly Christmas she said, 'I feel bad that 1 haven't made mincemeat. Or a Christmas cake. Or a pudding. Th e pantry is begging for a pudding, wrapped in a cloth and full ofsilve r sixpences and charms.' Reggie wondered if Dr Hunter was thinkin g about her own Christmases when she was a child but Dr Hunte r said, 'Heavens, no.'
    Reggie didn't think that the pantry was begging for anything , except possibly a bit ofa tidy. Mr Hunter was always rooting throug h there, looking for ingredients and spoiling Dr Hunter's neat ranks o f tins and jars.
    Dr Hunter ('Call me Jo'), who didn't believe in religion, who didn't believe in 'any kind oftranscendence except that of the human spirit', believed most firmly in order and taste. 'Morris says that you should have nothing in your house that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful,' she said to Reggie when they were filling a pretty little vase (,Worcester') with flowers from the garden. Reggie thought she meant someone called Maurice, probably a gay friend, until she noticed a biography ofWilliam Morris on the bookshelf and thought, duh, stupid, because of course she knew who h e was. Twice a week a cleaner called Liz came in and moaned about how much work she had to do but Reggie thought she had it pretty easy because the Hunters had everything under control, they weren't housework Nazis or anything but they knew the difference between comfort and chaos, unlike Ms MacDonald whose entire house was a 'repository ofjunk' -bits of old crap everywhere, receipts and pens, clocks without keys, keys without locks, clothes