Everyone looked uncomfortable, and there was throat-clearing. Art laughed. I felt a bit sorry for him. It’s not as if Art had gone into the family business kind of thing.

  Prue announced lunch. During the soup, which Grandma Woolthamly had difficulty with and in the end abandoned with a clatter of her spoon, they had a conversation, shouted for Grandma Woolthamly’s benefit, about the wedding of a second cousin, Danielle from Inglewood, who was marrying a minor member of the English royal family in Oxford in June. Issy said wasn’t he, like, a hundred and ninety-seventh in line to the throne, the fiancé? Art said you’d need a lot of haemophilia to be about, and they both snorted into their soup. I might have let out a giggle myself. Well, these weren’t really my jokes to laugh at.

  Just as Mrs Muru had delivered the fish pie, Grandma Woolthamly announced that she was going to the wedding.

  ‘Oh, Mummy,’ shouted Prue, ‘I told you, I don’t know if you’d be up to the flight these days. It’s twenty-four hours on the plane, not counting stopovers.’

  Grandma Woolthamly said she had already arranged the present. When Prue said she could post it—and added, if you must, quite firmly, so everyone looked—Grandma Woolthamly said, more firmly, ‘I’m taking it in person.’

  Issy said, ‘Don’t say we didn’t warn you,’ sort of sotto voce.

  ‘I’m forearmed and forewarned,’ said Grandma Woolthamly.

  I watched Art go all wide-eyed as he asked, ‘What is the present, Grandma? A shepherdess?’ He and Issy dissolved into giggles.

  ‘A crystal bowl?’ squeaked Issy.

  ‘Twenty thousand pounds,’ said Grandma Woolthamly.

  I saw Art stop with his fork poised halfway to his mouth. Issy had gone silent too. I was already silent, but I went more so. Bert harrumphed, although he wasn’t a harrumpher.

  Issy turned to Prue. ‘Mummy, this isn’t true, is it?’

  Prue had her eyebrows up by way of yes. ‘You can’t talk her out of it. I’ve tried.’ She was getting up from the table, asking Mrs Muru where the lemon was, even though Mrs Muru wasn’t there. Honestly! She disappeared into the hall.

  Art was frowning and murmuring. ‘In New Zealand dollars, isn’t that fifty-something . . .’ He shouted, ‘Quite a lot of money, Grandma!’

  ‘It won’t be true,’ murmured Issy. ‘She’s, you know.’ Issy shook her head to indicate battiness.

  Grandma Woolthamly was hoofing down her fish pie, making a right mess of the potato on the front of her cream dress. At least it matched.

  ‘Grandma,’ shouted Art, ‘that’s fifty-something thousand dollars.’ He turned to me. ‘Pretty good present,’ said Art. ‘What did she give us for our wedding?’

  ‘It was hardly a wedding,’ said Issy. ‘And you’re not exactly royalty, are you, Megan?’

  Everyone laughed, including me. Except Bert, who was sitting at the end of the table looking, I noticed, slightly absent.

  In the spirit of mirth I turned to Art and suggested, ‘Didn’t we get a villa?’

  Issy sat back. ‘That villa’s not yours.’ She turned to Prue, who was back with a dish of cut lemons. ‘Isn’t it in the family trust?’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ said Art.

  Prue had a fixed smile on her face, and she was saying, What isn’t, darling? What isn’t?

  ‘Oh well,’ said Issy. ‘I don’t mind. I really don’t. But back to the subject. Danielle’s only a second cousin, maybe third. And as thick as two short planks.’

  The fork fell out of Grandma Woolthamly’s purple arthritic little fist. She fixed Issy, then Art, each with a rheumy stare. ‘It’s fifty-two thousand. Danielle is doing her bit. Marrying royalty, and inviting everyone to the wedding. She understands about family. That’s how we built this.’

  I could sense Art chortling away in his chest. He was asking, Was I invited? I don’t think so. I noticed he didn’t use the royal We. Issy said she definitely wasn’t invited, she’d remember an embossed invitation. But hey, Grandma should be left to do what she wanted, it was only money.

  Everyone stuffed their face, and it seemed the fifty-two-thousand-dollar question had been kissed goodbye. But after a while, Grandma Woolthamly turned to Art and started up again: ‘What about the dried fruit? Are the Asians still buying our dried fruit?’

  Art half laughed and told Grandma Woolthamly she was talking to the wrong person.

  ‘Didn’t he go to university?’ Grandma Woolthamly asked the table.

  ‘Mummy,’ said Prue, ‘he has a PhD. But he didn’t study things like that.’

  Art reminded everyone modestly that he almost had a PhD.

  Grandma Woolthamly sat up straight. ‘For pity’s sake, why didn’t he study something useful when he has a company to run?’

  Prue said, ‘We’ve been through this, Mummy, many times.’

  I felt sorry for Art, really I did. I mean business, it just wasn’t his thing.

  But Grandma Woolthamly had focused her watery eyes on Art again. ‘A PhD,’ she said in a very doubtful tone.

  Art said, ‘In English literature, Grandma,’ in a slightly condescending way.

  ‘Mummy, once again, you don’t understand. You can have a very good career in literature.’

  ‘Doing what?’ barked Grandma Woolthamly and scanned everyone, even me. That’s how I knew she had such a pale, jelly-like stare.

  ‘Well,’ began Bert.

  Grandma Woolthamly eyeballed him, but when he started to go on she talked over him. ‘I can read a book. I used to read a lot of books before my eyesight went. Now I get talking books from the mobile library. They’re very good.’ She swivelled back to Art. ‘Why don’t you get some talking books?’

  ‘Grandma . . .’

  ‘Listen to them at night. Run the business during the day and keep the family afloat.’

  Issy asked why Grandma didn’t ask her that, but no one answered. Prue was busy telling Grandma Woolthamly that they were creative, these two, always had been, and Grandma knew that. At this, Issy put her head on one side a little coquettishly.

  ‘I said they’re creative,’ Prue repeated loudly.

  Grandma Woolthamly let out a high-pitched cackle. ‘Who will tell me about the business? Is Japan still buying our dried fruit?’

  All through this I was minding my own business. This was nothing to do with me. I have to say, it was a teensy bit uncomfortable. Prue passed the salad bowl, first picking something out of it with a frown. As she did this, I noticed she and Bert exchanging glances.

  ‘Who will tell me!’ Grandma Woolthamly rapped her stick on the floor. ‘Is Japan buying our dried fruit!’

  ‘No,’ said Prue.

  ‘What?’

  ‘No!’ shouted Prue. Her hair was slightly mussed and her silk scarf had come undone. She lowered her voice. ‘It’s the Asian crisis, but it’ll recover. We just have to be careful.’

  Grandma Woolthamly folded her monkey-puzzle hands in satisfaction. ‘Finally someone tells me. I listen to the news. I’m not an imbecile. Since when have they not been buying?’

  ‘Well,’ said Bert, sitting up importantly in his wing chair at the end of the table, ‘it’s not immediate. There are contractual obligations, of course, and—’

  ‘Tell me!’ rapped Grandma Woolthamly.

  ‘When there’s no money, there’s no money,’ said Bert miserably.

  Mrs Muru waddled in with a pavlova with strawberries and kiwifruit, and everything went quiet. The pavlova was eaten with relish by Grandma Woolthamly. Prue tried to make light conversation. Art’s job, Issy’s soundtrack. How Megan didn’t like the rabbit. I tried not to catch Art’s eye in case I got the giggles. It’s hard to explain, but only a certain kind of giggles was okay.

  •

  In the drawing room over coffee, Grandma Woolthamly repeated that she wanted to go home. I was probably infected with the air of giving that presided over the Woolthamlys. Remember, Art never came home from ‘the farm’ without food, linen, a retro fan. I leaned towards Grandma Woolthamly, who was dissolving into the white couch cushions in her cream-and-potato dress, and I shouted, ‘I’ll drive you.’ The truth is, I was dying to get out of the house. Those Woolthamlys, no wonder they didn’t argue, because when they did, it was chilling.

  Grandma Woolthamly looked at me as if for the first time, and I saw the puzzled expression in her oystery eyes. ‘Drive me?’

  I repeated my offer, and looked at Art for backup. He nodded. He seemed a bit freaked.

  ‘What’s the girl talking about?’ said Grandma Woolthamly. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Megan, Mummy,’ shouted Prue. ‘She’s offering to drive you back to the care facility. Very kind of her, don’t you think?’

  Oh, I was kind. I was halfway to being a Woolthamly.

  ‘Or Art will,’ I said. We’d both go. I certainly wasn’t staying here on my own.

  The truth was, I was longing for the blacked-out house. I wanted damp, dark, the wallpaper at the end of my fingertips. I wanted to be in the front room, listening to the end of the client’s story. I wanted that so much.

  But Grandma Woolthamly hadn’t heard. She was asking Mrs Muru, who had brought in more coffee, how her daughter was. Mrs Muru hovered a moment with the coffee pot, and corrected Grandma Woolthamly. Son, her son, and he was fine, thank you for asking.

  ‘Has he left school now?’ asked Grandma Woolthamly.

  Mrs Muru said he had, three years ago.

  ‘You knew this, Mummy,’ said Prue.

  ‘He’s at the drying plant?’ asked Grandma Woolthamly.

  ‘Just in the holidays,’ said Mrs Muru. She checked around the room. Everyone was looking at her and she seemed unused to the limelight. She bowed a little and smiled. ‘To put himself through university.’

  ‘Goodness. University these days.’ She was wide-eyed, then something occurred to her. ‘What’s he studying?’ she demanded.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mrs Muru. She was smiling, kind of bashful. ‘Engineering.’

  Grandma Woolthamly jerked back in surprise.

  ‘You knew all this, Mummy,’ said Prue tiredly.

  A beady expression had come over Grandma Woolthamly’s face. She fixed her stare on Mrs Muru. ‘Not books?’

  Mrs Muru swayed in the doorway on her gammy leg. ‘Books?’

  ‘He’s not studying books?’ said Grandma Woolthamly very distinctly.

  ‘No.’ Mrs Muru shook her head. ‘Chemical engineering.’

  ‘Well,’ said Grandma Woolthamly, almost leering at Mrs Muru, ‘let’s hope the Asians keep buying dried fruit.’

  A worried look crossed Mrs Muru’s face. She waited for a bit, and then, because the conversation seemed to have ended, hurried away.

  ‘Why, Grandma?’ demanded Issy. She looked at Prue. ‘Why?’

  Prue shook her head.

  ‘See,’ said Grandma Woolthamly triumphantly. ‘Even they study something useful.’

  ‘Oh, Mummy,’ said Prue. ‘Let’s get you down for your rest.’

  It seemed that the plan to drive Grandma Woolthamly back to the care facility wasn’t a happening thing anymore. I was trying to catch Art’s eye—get me out of here—but he’d busied himself in the pages of the library book Bert had got for him. Prue and Bert seemed to be brushing themselves off for the afternoon’s activities. The thing I’d always liked about ‘the farm’ was that there was so little to do you were forced to find amusing activities. But this day felt different. I wished I’d brought Heart of Darkness with me, which I was ploughing through.

  Issy performed a magnificent stretch on the couch. ‘You should have done engineering, Art, instead of books. Then you could have made something of yourself.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ said Art, from his book.

  Grandma Woolthamly was sitting bolt upright on the couch. ‘I want to go home.’

  Good development. I repeated my offer to drive her, but she seemed out of sorts. Cantankerous old bat might be closer to the truth.

  ‘Home, girl. Home.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We’ll drive you, won’t we, Art?’

  Art absent-mindedly assented.

  ‘It’s not far,’ Prue said aside to me, then yelled, ‘But, Mummy, shouldn’t you have your rest first? That’s what you always do. You have your rest and then Mrs Muru brings us afternoon tea.’

  ‘Home!’ shouted Gramdma Woolthamly. ‘England. I’m going to the wedding. I want to go home!’

  ‘We know that, Mummy,’ said Prue. She helped Grandma Woolthamly into the spare room.

  Bert thought we might all go for another ramble. He was polishing his binoculars at a side table.

  ‘But what is it about Jayden?’ asked Issy.

  ‘Who?’ asked Bert.

  ‘Daddy, Mrs Muru’s son.’

  Art turned a page. ‘And you should have been a chartered accountant, Issy.’

  ‘Oh shut up,’ said Issy. ‘Daddy?’

  Bert harrumphed. It seemed to be a new habit. He stood up and wrangled the leather binocular case onto himself. He looked strained. ‘Well, he’ll lose his summer job. And we’ll have to lay off his father. And the uncles.’

  ‘What, you mean Eddy?’ asked Issy. ‘All of them, all five? Why?’

  ‘It’s not pleasant,’ said Bert, ‘for anyone, but we’ve had to pull in our horns.’

  ‘But, Daddy,’ shrilled Issy, ‘they’ve been working for you for fifteen years.’

  ‘Fourteen,’ said Bert. ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘God!’ said Issy. ‘This is terrible. Can’t you just, I don’t know, ride it out?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ said Bert. He took out the binoculars again and cocked them out the window.

  ‘Why not?’ Issy sprang off the couch. There was something threatening about her.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ said Bert. ‘Ask your mother.’

  ‘Yeah, pretty fucking complicated for them,’ said Issy.

  ‘Issy!’ said Bert. The Woolthamlys didn’t swear.

  ‘Did you hear this, Art?’ said Issy. ‘If you can get your head out of that book for a second. They’re getting rid of the Murus, Eddy and Junior et al.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ said Art. His eyebrows were knit.

  I must say I was sitting there, sunk into the opposite couch with my head swivelling like I was watching a ping-pong match. But what could I do? I was only here because I’d happened to sit next to Art at a Derrida talk at the Michael Fowler Centre back in 1993. Life is strange, and unfair.

  ‘I think this is absolutely the wrong thing to do, Daddy,’ said Issy.

  ‘Do you, darling?’

  ‘Yes I do. Don’t you, Art?’ asked Issy. ‘Don’t you think this is the wrong thing to do?’

  I looked from one to the other.

  ‘Of course I do,’ said Art.

  ‘Well? Well?’ said Issy. She eyeballed Bert. ‘Daddy?’

  ‘The Muru boys got fourteen good years out of us.’

  ‘Fourteen good—’ Issy was pacing. ‘Are you listening to this, Art?’

  He was. He was in agony, his radiant face clouded. I could see it.

  ‘Also, Daddy,’ said Issy, ‘don’t forget out of the Woolthamlys. The Murus got fourteen good years out of the Woolthamlys. You’re a Frome.’

  Art sat upright on the couch and his book clattered to the floor. ‘Issy!’

  ‘It’s true,’ said Issy, almost smiling at Art. She turned to face the mantelpiece.

  Art winced at his father. Bert was limping over to the French doors. ‘Don’t argue, children, not on my account. It’s true, this is nothing to do with me.’

  What I thought right then was: this was me. I was the Bert figure. Always would be. The client was right. I had no say in my own life. I felt my hackles rise.

  Prue was in the doorway. ‘What’s all this ridiculous yelling? Mrs Muru is in the house.’ Yelling was the worst thing. I have to say, part of me liked that decorum. Prue plumped the little dent in the cushion where Grandma Woolthamly had been embedded. There was a sense of power being restored.

  ‘Mummy,’ demanded Issy, ‘tell us exactly what’s going on.’

  Prue straightened from her cushion-boofing. There was a brief glance at me, and then, it seemed, the decision to go on regardless. ‘Darling, it’s them or us. The business could go. We need to pull in our horns.’

  Issy went quiet. From the open French doors, Bert asked who was up for another walk. The garden, ‘the farm’ beckoned, birds twittered. No one replied. I looked at Art. He was sitting still and frowning, as if this were a chess problem. I sat like a stone. Nothing to do with me. But it was. It was.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Issy had turned back to the room, and was framed by the candlesticks on the mantelpiece. ‘Do they know? Have you warned them?’

  ‘Who?’ asked Prue. She picked up Art’s book and added it to the pile on the massive coffee table.

  ‘The Murus, of course.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Does Mrs Muru know?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Prue. ‘Come on, sweetie, nothing is finalised.’

  I remembered what the client had said—to keep the staff on as long as possible, so the business would be saleable. Fair enough, I suppose.

  Issy stepped forward and planted herself in the middle of one of Prue’s fluffy hand-hooked rugs. ‘Mrs Muru must be told.’

  Prue told Issy firmly that it wasn’t her business.

  ‘It is my business,’ said Issy. ‘This is our business. Isn’t it, Art?’

  Art sat looking lost, saying nothing. I also continued my stone impersonation.

  Issy groaned and turned to Prue. ‘What are you going to do—wait till the day before you fire them?’ When there was no answer, she said, ‘You know what? I’m going to tell her myself.’

  ‘Issy, don’t!’ said Prue urgently. Her voice had gone all deep and scratchy.

  ‘What, Mummy? Are you worried Mrs Muru won’t finish the washing-up? She’ll probably walk off the job, and I wouldn’t blame her.’

  ‘Of course she won’t,’ sighed Prue. ‘She needs the job more than ever.’

  Issy put her head in her hands and wailed. Suddenly she looked at Art, her eyes on full-beam. ‘What does the armchair socialist think? Should we tell Mrs Muru what we all know?’

  Art gaped for a second like a fish. Then he said—and it sort of sounded important—‘I think we very probably should.’ I must say I felt sorry for him. It wasn’t his thing. And he didn’t like arguments.