The family had grown like a spreading tree, and Ned and Margery had watched its progress together, until her life had come to a peaceful end three years ago. Ned still talked to her sometimes, when he was alone. ‘Alfo has bought the Slaughterhouse Tavern,’ he would say as he got into bed at the end of the day. Or again: ‘Little Eddie is as tall as me, now.’ It hardly mattered that she made no reply: he knew what she would have thought. ‘Money sticks to Alfo like honey on his fingers,’ she would have said, and: ‘Eddie will be after girls any day now.’
