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Potter at her disappearing form. It misses, cracks onto the door. The spine, already bent in a dozen parallel lines, breaks.
    “Thanks, Mum, for cancelling my piano!” she shouts down the stairs. She’s very pleased about this.
    She hates her piano teacher Roberta. Silly cow, making her play all that, what was it? Hanon. Sounds like knitting.
    She hears a vague response from downstairs.
    “What? What?”
    Tracey is coming up the stairs.
    Her head is entirely obscured by a giant cheeseplant which she is laboriously carting up through the house.
    “Belle, it is normal to say hello to the rest of the family when you come back from the gym. I had no idea you were here until just now.”
    “I said hello to Anya.”
    “Yes, but I am talking about your Family.”
    “I thought Anya was meant to be a member of the Family,” retorts Belle. “Why on earth are you bringing that vile plant up?”
    “Oxygen,” puffs her mother. “I don’t think you have enough oxygen up here.”
    Belle has no response to this.
    “Read about it in The Mail ,” manages her mother. “Putting plants in your room helps your brain develop. So I thought you could have a spell with Charlie. He’s been in the garden for far too long.”
    “Charlie?” echoes Belle.
    “Yes,” grunts her mother, heaving pot and plant on a table. Quite a lot of soil falls out of the pot and lands on the carpet.
    “Damn. Gosh, that was heavy. Charlie the Cheeseplant.” She strokes a leaf.
    “Had him in our first flat.”
    Belle isn’t interested in her mother’s memoirs. She’s not interested in having a giant, dusty, soily cheeseplant in her vicinity, either. Now that piano practise has been magically removed from the equation, she is however quite keen to go out. She senses she needs to close down the piano conversation.
    “So, no more Roberta? Ever? Thank God.”
    Tracey holds up a manicured hand. She is always perfectly groomed. Even before the Lottery win, she was beautifully turned out.
    Tracey is part of a beauty product pyramid scheme which relies on people flogging cosmetics door to door. It used to be her sole income. She still does it, from time to time. The positive effect of this is her physical perfection. The negative side is that such a job wholly relies on the market. And people aren’t investing, much, in beauty at the moment.
    “I have arranged a small break with Roberta, Belle. Just until Easter. Then, hopefully, things will have picked up, and we can continue. Will you continue practising, though?”
    “Yeah, yeah. When can I go out?”
    “Tonight? You can’t.”
    “What?”
    “Sorry. We have the Residents’ Association meeting tonight and you need to stay in and look after Grace. We have all been waiting for you to get back from the gym.”
    “What? But, Mum!”
    “Too bad.”
    “What about Anya, for God’s sake? She’s meant to be here to look after Grace. That’s the whole reason she’s here! She IS the au pair. I’m just a blood relation.”
    “Anya is coming with us.”
    “What?”
    “Anya is coming with us. Belle, will you stop saying ‘What’? You heard me perfectly well. Anya is coming with us, because she needs to learn how a proper meeting is held. It’s for her Business Studies Course.”
    There is a pause.
    “What?”
    “She says she needs to see the minuting and so on. Frankly, Belle, she’s very switched on. A bit more than you are. Don’t you have any interest in how a meeting is run?”
    Belle rolls her eyes at her mother. She smiles and waves her arms in the air.
    “Oh, Mum,” she says.
    “What, darling?”
    “I can really feel the oxygen surging up here! It’s amazing!”
    “Thank you, Belle. We’ll be back at nine.”
    Belle goes into her room, winds an olive-coloured scarf around her neck and picks up her electric guitar. If her mother wants her to do music, she’ll do music. Her kind of music. Four floors down, and about ten minutes later, the front door slams.

Chapter Three The