“Why do people call you Jones?” Edie asked idly, watching Jones work and then realising what she was doing and stepping up to lay out her own bedding. “Why don’t they call you Frances, or Franklin, even?”
Jones wrapped herself round and around into the complicated sleeping nest arrangement she preferred before she answered. “I never felt like a Frances,” she said. “Never. Not even when I was tiny.” She paused. “Pater called me Frankie, anyway, when I was little. As I got older he shortened it to Frank. And then…I don’t know. I didn’t like the others calling me Frank…that seemed something between Pater and I. They called him Mr Franklin. I didn’t want to be Miss Frances or Miss Frank. Or Miss Jones, come to that. They tried calling me Miss Jones for a while—the year Merton travelled with u
