‘Staying there, with my mother’s cousin.’

He thought she said it proudly but ignored her. ‘How splendid. Do you remember me telling you about Much House – that strange mansion my great grandfather built, and how he loved it so much he called it Much House?’

‘A little.’

‘Well, that’s in Calcutta. Perhaps you could visit on behalf of family. Do you remember the story, how his son lost it to some young rogue in a game of poker – to the bad tenant?’

Susan tried to remember but in truth she was growing restless and a little bored. She was inexperienced enough to feel superior about her first visit to India. Thomas was officially her beau in this county, though nothing had ever happened between them, not a kiss, not a stroke. They had taken up as friends months ago and it was clear Thomas was sweet on her – but Susan was only seventeen and theoretical about everything, including sex, and if Thomas was trying to push for some final romantic encounter, that afternoon tea in the crab-apple garden was not to be it. Fucking was something other young people did.

Still, he was persistent and for polite sake, she tried to remember the story he had told her, but it was shadowy and gothic – a large dusty house filled with beautiful colonial bric-a-brac, a lifetime’s collection of indulgent imperialism. There had been a dishevelled drunken son of the original founder – why was it is seemed to skip a generation, good son, bad son, good son, bad son – and a gambling habit which one monsoon in the Saturday Club had seen the large house lost in a game of poker to this young upstart, himself raised in India though he was, she recalled, of Irish origin. The bad tenant.

Thomas was saying, ‘Well that’s what the family always call him. We’ve tried all legal routes but we simply can’t get it back, until he dies, this tenant. He got the house, furnishings and all.’

‘What a strange story!’

‘Isn’t it? Perhaps we’ll both visit it.’

‘Yes.’

He was losing her again, he could tell. Thomas’s general character was slow, pedantic and fair. He was just twenty-two and certainly not a virgin – he’d been