Nobody handled it gracefully. I want to establish that immediately.
Priya put her pen down and stared. Marcus said: "I'm sorry. What?" My mother said nothing, which was the most alarming response of everyone's because Jade Calloway always had something to say. Thomas froze mid-biscuit. And Damien was standing — he had been sitting, he was now standing without having made the decision — because a woman looked at him with grey eyes the same shade as his and said:
No. I'm not.
"Sit down," I said to him. Quietly.
He sat.
Margaret Cole — sixty, silver-haired, composed in the way of someone who had been composing herself for a very long time — stood at the edge of the room and held herself the way people held themselves when rehearsal turned out to be insufficient.
"I'll explain," she said
