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Fen, with equal patience, taught them bridge and mahjong. In the tiny operations of castles and tiles, of horses and playing cards, in those dwarf obsessive circuits and friendly competitions, they all found distraction.
    Among the cousins Lucy met an especial friend; she was Su-Lin, a pretty girl who was almost her age. They would curl up together under the low scented branches of the lemon tree, pretending they were twins, and sharing secrets. Su-Lin had honey-coloured skin and gold rings in her ears, and Lucy was in love with her. They agreed to marry when they were grown up, and have many, many children, but in the meantime Lucy showed her how to use the magnifying glass to burn her own name in pieces of wood.
Su-Lin
, in Chinese characters, appeared on the gatepost in front of the house; and James and Fen, amused, could not bring themselves to scold her. Thomas was also in love with Su-Lin: he did cartwheels to attract her attention and caught good-luck crickets for her straw cage and years later Lucy discovered that Su-Lin had also promised marriage to her brother.
    In the evenings the children wheeled their grandfather down the main street of Ballarat. He hailed complete strangers and smiled at everyone. And now that he was ill, and had lost his son, and was grievously afflicted, most people were kinder and some smiled back.
    It was a shock to learn that Uncle Neville, their mother’s only brother, was travelling all the way from India to collect them. Grandpa James said it was what their father had wanted. He had, Grandpa James insisted, written and arranged it. So when the time was near the children were moved again. Their new beginning ended. They boarded the coach to Melbourne, back to the haunted house, and to purple-faced Mrs Minchin. At the coach house, their grandfather was trembling all over; his head was shaking like a puppet and he was weeping shamelessly. The cousins were there and so was Fen. Lucy and Thomas watched their family diminish to chesspiece size, until in the distance all that was visible was an oriental garment that caught the sun’s rays and glittered, like a tube of lit glass.

6
    THE HOUSE LOOKED closed up, but they knew Mrs Minchin was there. Although the gate was looped with its rusty chain and the curtains were drawn, they could hear the sound of Ned, frantic at their return, leaping and barking in the hallway, running back and forth, testing the limits of his closed space with manic excitement. When they knocked there was an explosion of barking and scratching, but no Mrs Minchin came hurrying to answer the door. The children stood hand in hand on their own doorstep, like characters in a fairy tale, wondering what to do.
    â€œPerhaps she’s died,” Lucy said hopefully.
    â€œMurdered, I should think. With her throat cut,” Thomas added. “And purple blood in bucketsful.”
    The boy was appalled by what he had just said. The children looked at each other, a little uncertain, and decided to consult the next-door neighbour.
    Mrs O’Connor was blind and witchy and had hairs sprouting in a tiny neat plume from a mole on her cheek. She reached out for the children in case they were imposters, but they stood apart, and were ready to run if she grabbed at them.
    â€œThursday. She thinks it’s Thursday that you’re coming. She’s up at Castlemaine, visiting her sister.”
    Her narrow hands hung in the air, both in threat and supplication, willing the children to move forward and consent to be touched. They looked like dead things, suspended there, so grey and shrivelled. Lucy thought: people die in different stages, this woman first in the eyes and then in the hands; and Thomas thought: she is dead already, she is like a mummy from Egypt, artificially preserved. The children were no less afraid for being beyond her reach.
    â€œThat poor, poor dog,” Mrs O’Connor said. “Day and night it’s been crying.”
    Thomas remembered