Chapter Eight
Then Again
“Why does uncle Timothy always sit on the carpet to watch television now?”
It was young Ilse who asked the question, my soon-to-be eleven-year-old niece watching me as I sat at the dressing-table in my bedroom and made up my face for a business dinner that evening. Katya, the thirteen-year-old, was in her room doing homework and, as usual, it was her younger sister who accompanied me as I went about the task of making the most of myself as she watched the various applications as if fascinated.
“Uncle Timothy hasn’t been very well recently,” I lied to cover my withdrawal of his ‘furniture privileges’. It was two months on from our trip to the House of Fraser and the discussion that followed on from our somewhat acrimonious breakfast and even more heated discussi
