Observing the boy’s mood, he said, “A good day today, Robert?”

“The best, father,” Robert said. “Absolutely the best. Even though Frances was late and I had to wait.”

Sebastian glanced toward the kitchen. “Is she upset about something?”

“I don’t know,” Robert said. “Is she?”

“Hang up your coat.”

Robert had turned eighteen now. Almost a grown man, and not so much a boy anymore. He attended a private institution in South Hampstead where he received an education designed around his needs. Here, for once, his talents were recognized, and his abilities explored and developed in ways that no one else had ever considered. The only advice they’d received, when Robert had been small and manifestly strange, had been to treat him as feebleminded and hide him away.

After he’d hung up his coat, Robert said, “I’d like to read for a while if I may, Father.”

“Wait until after supper.”

“But that will leave me with nothing to do now.”

“Ask Frances if she needs any coal brought up.”

Last year, under the supervision of the college principal, they’d tried Robert in a brief period of employment. Very brief. Placed in a job as a waiter in a middle-sized commercial hotel, he hadn’t lasted a morning. He’d taken everyone’s orders and then sat down to his own breakfast.

Returning from the kitchen, Robert said, “Frances says she brought in coal this afternoon. What else can I do?”

“Tell me what you’re reading.”

“There’s a serial in the Strand. I’m collecting all the parts. The Smith’s lady is ill and no one had saved my copy, so we had to go to Waterloo.”

Ah. No wonder Frances seemed irritated. Elisabeth’s sister was a saint, but Robert’s obsessions could wear out the patience of one. In America, he’d collected dime magazines. Here he’d transferred his obsession to the likes of Rider Haggard, Verne, and Wells.

He said, “May I read my serial now, father?”

Sebastian gave in.

“Be sure to stop when your mother gets home,” he said.

Robert settled in a chair by the window with his magazine, and Sebastian took a letter opener and started on the day’s post. When Elisabeth arrived a few minutes later, Robert didn’t even notice.

When he saw her coat, Sebastian said, “Is it raining?”

“When is it not?” Elisabeth said, and went into the kitchen.

Within a minute he heard voices being raised. Then he heard Elisabeth’s affronted cry of “Mince?” Moments after that, Frances emerged from the kitchen and stamped up the back stairs to their attic rooms.

Sebastian went into the kitchen.

“What’s this about?” he said.

For no reason he could see, Elisabeth was moving all the evening’s raw food from the place where Frances had laid it out to another. She said, “The butcher gave our order to someone else. So forget your chops, it’s mince.”

“I don’t mind mince.”

“What’s the matter with her? I can’t trust her with the simplest task. I have to do everything myself.”

Sebastian knew better than to defend one sister to the other right now, but he was still at a loss to see the younger woman’s crime.

Elisabeth added, “And if there’s a shirt you want to wear again, you’d better go and rescue it from the wash.”

He went upstairs. Frances heard him and, when he entered the larger of the attic bedrooms, stepped back from the laundry basket with her hands lifted in the air in an end-of-the-tether, All right, what now? gesture.

He said, “May I speak?”

Frances waited without moving, looking down.

Sebastian said, “Forgive your sister, Frances. She spends all her days being harsh with people. It takes her a while to return to herself.”

For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to reply.

Then she said, “Then perhaps we should move away from the borough.”

“Why?”

“So she’ll have a longer walk home and more time to adjust her foul mood.”

Then she gave him a glance, to see how that had gone down. He realized that she was making a joke, of a kind. It was hard to tell with Frances. She was the quiet sister, the younger one. But she was in her thirties now, with a gray hair or two that she didn’t bother to conceal. Somehow along the way, without anybody planning it, the younger woman’s practical room-and-board arrangement had turned into a spinster’s life.

He said, “It could be worse. Wait until she next sees the butcher. I wouldn’t want to be in his apron.”

That drew another look, and a rueful smile. Or a half smile, anyway, which he suspected came more out of politeness than anything else.

As he descended the attic stairs to the smell of frying mince, it seemed to Sebastian that such fallings-out were becoming more frequent these days. He was required to play the peacemaker whenever he was at home.

Since the household seemed to run perfectly well during his absences, he wondered if these arguments flared up only because, with him around, they could. Elisabeth and her sister were like two fighters who would never engage without a ring and a referee. Without those, to strike out would be to injure. But with Sebastian in the middle, they could vent their feelings in relative safety.

AFTER THEY’D DINED, Frances took up her sewing and Robert went to his bedroom, an extension to the apartments that was little more than a cubby built out over the shop’s front. He took his newest magazine with him, to read for the second time.

When Robert was out of their earshot, Sebastian said, “I’ve had a reply from the publishing house.”

“Saying they won’t take him.”

He showed her the letter. “They’ll write to us if a position becomes available,” he said.

She looked at the letter, but she didn’t take it from him or read it.

“They always say that,” she said, and gathered up the last of the plates to take back to the kitchen.

He rose, and followed her. All through the meal he’d been sensing that there was more to this than weariness or frayed nerves.

He said, “What happened today?”

“Nothing.”

“Elisabeth.”

“I said, nothing.”

He waited, and then she said, “We had to have the police in.”

“For?”

She stopped what she was doing, and took a moment.

Then she said, “A man came in wanting to take his child away. He was stinking of beer and he wouldn’t be told. He said that the doctors were killing her and her place was at home. Said he had a knife, although he didn’t show it. Two of the nurses kept him talking while I ran for the police.”

“What’s wrong with his child?”

“She’s dying.”

“Nothing the doctors can do?”

“No.”

“Then why not let him take her, if there’s nothing to be done?”

“His home is a sty. And his children only matter when he’s drunk. And the more drink he takes, the more sentimental he becomes. He’s the kind of man whose love is all noise and self-pity; at least she’ll die where the sheets are clean.”

He touched her shoulder. “You’re worn out,” he said. “You should go to bed.”

“I think I will.”

She went about half an hour later. In many people’s minds, working in a charitable children’s hospital was an extended fantasy of rescued orphans and grateful Tiny Tims. But the truth of it was not for the soft of heart.

Sebastian was left with the publishing-house letter in his hand. There was no point in pushing Elisabeth to read it; unlike him, she wouldn’t take courtesy for encouragement. Not today, at any rate.

He became aware that Frances had paused in her work and was looking at him. Then she quickly pretended that she wasn’t and returned her attention to her decorative embroidery, held only inches from her face.

He said, “Have you enough light?”

“Enough for what I need,” she said.

He had a rolltop bureau in the corner of the room. When he was home, it served him for an office. He put the letter in one of its drawers and then picked up his copy of Owain Lancaster’s book.