four stories not about fruit: lime

I wrote this in spring 2019, because a friend and I had made a deal that I would upload four stories and she would upload four songs by April 23rd. It's unedited, and I do know which parts of it are clunky. I pasted together all four stories and put it on Kindle Direct Publishing, where it made about £4.50.

In March 2025 I'm off Amazon, so here you go.

Bridget examined her nails and cuticles as the lift slowed and the doors purred open. If there was broken skin, the bactericides in Noor's hallway would sting, and it was always better to expect it.

Noor's power-chair had returned to its charging dock beside the front door and its lights were green. Noor yelled "Morning!" from bed as Bridget let the inner door click behind her.

"Morning! Sleep well?"

"I think so? I used the thunderstorm loop Clare sent. It's good."

"What do you need first?" Bridget looked around the room for things to fix. The window blinds were fully open, a sweet breeze passed through from grille to grille, and Noor hadn't twisted her bedding much at all. It must have been a much calmer night than usual.

"I'm tying up admin from last week, give me three minutes." Noor said, eye-flicking through files invisible to Bridget. "Then wash."

Bridget nodded and left the bedroom to check on the set.

The martha's display reported that it had cleaned the air-sling at 2330, sterilised the headset and gloves from 0045 to 0345, rinsed and dried the air-sling at 0530. It had a calmly fat smiling face next to the words NO FAULTS.

"Open blinds." Bridget said, just loud enough. As they rotated, she pushed up the sliding door to the cold storage and unlatched a fresh canister soup. She carried it back through to the bedroom.

"You remember it's murders this week?" Noor asked, flicking away displays and focusing on Bridget's face.

"Yes, you said fewer watchers but they're nicer." Bridget said, unsealing a packet of body wipes and spreading one over her hand.

"Mmm. They tip more, and it's less stressful than horror."

Bridget lifted one of Noor's feet gently up off the bed and began to wash her ankle, watching for signs of pain in her face. "I see there's a call from physio."

"I thought I'd play it later." Noor said, grinning.

"It's up to you."

"How do you do that?"

"Years of practice. Come on, it's First Day, it can only be five minutes long." Bridget said, picking the next wipe out of the packet and starting on Noor's right leg.

Noor called up the message and projected it on the door to her bedlinen storage.

Physio smiled whitely and said "Good morning! This session we'll be experiencing hand and wrist actions."

Noor snorted ungracefully.

"Child." Bridget said, flicking the first two body wipes into waste disposal and picking out a third. "Is now alright to lift you?"

Noor breathed out, held it and nodded.

"You're holding a yellow rubber ball of four centimetres diameter between thumb and forefinger of your left hand." said Physio. A left hand appeared on the screen next to her, stripped of skin, its textbook muscles glinting cleanly. "Pinch and feel that the ball is rubber but resists."

Bridget's left hand, holding Noor up off the bed by her shoulders, tried to join in. "Sorry."

"Didn't feel it. Don't drop me."

"Turn your hand at the wrist so that the ball drops into your palm. Curl your smallest finger inwards to tap it, but don't grip. Repeat this with your other fingers, until you reach your forefinger. Then hold the ball against your palm with the very tip of your forefinger. Count two, three, four, five, and turn your hand back so that you're holding the ball upwards against your palm."

"Why is it yellow?" Noor wondered, as Bridget settled her back into the bed, tweaking the white sheet flat under her.

"Must help some people imagine it. I can always smell the rubber."

Noor grimaced.

Physio continued, "Drop the ball into your right hand and do exactly the same sequence. Pinching between thumb and forefinger..."

Bridget turned the valve on the tubing installed above Noor's left hipbone, counted to two, pinched the flexible tube at the warm end, and lifted it and the empty enteral feed canister away from the bed to drop into waste management.

"No soup on the bed?" Noor said, absently, watching the disembodied hand on the screen.

"Not even a drop." Bridget said, sanitising her hands again.

A sterile tube out of a sterile packet, connected to Noor and then connected to the fresh canister.

"Now that the ball is back in your left hand, balance it in the well in the centre of your palm."

"I don't have a well in the centre of my palm." Noor said. "Can't possibly do this one."

"Visualise a well. Yellow brick. Teeny tiny metal bucket."

"Pointed roof!"

"That's the one." Bridget grinned, finished visual checks and turned Noor's valve again.

“Let’s get me into the chair, then.”

“She’s still going.”

Noor huffed. “I can still hear her and do the vish while I’m transferring.”

Bridget nodded, and stood out of the way while Noor summoned her power chair, which parked itself effortlessly at the bedside and sank to the correct height. A tweak at the sheet with one hand and her other hand out to mime stabilising, and Noor was settled.

“This time, catch the ball between your index finger and little finger as it drops.” said Physio, brightly.

Bridget balanced the canister on the chair’s calf-rest and stood back again to let Noor whirr out into the corridor and into her workroom. She followed, aware of her hand flexing in time with the skinned hand on the bedroom screen. The lights dimmed behind her, and Physio said “Repeat the sequence with your right - We can listen to the rest of this later!” and fell silent.

“You’re still doing it, aren’t you?” Noor called out as she drew up next to the air sling, and Bridget laughed. Magnets on the power chair’s arm attached to the side of the sling and the seat rose, sliding her securely into it. Bridget had tried the automated transfer once in her early days and felt it very unnerving, but then it hadn’t been calibrated for anything like a full weight.

Noor said “Chair, tip what’s on the footrest into the sling with me.” It did so. The feed canister came to a rest against her left shinbone. “Go dock, thank you.”

“Is that going to be alright there?” Bridget asked, sitting down in the assistant’s chair. It hadn’t been moved by the martha in the night, and was still angled precisely to see Noor’s reclining body, the corridor leading to the front door, and a display of biological and viewer feedback.

“It’s cold, I quite like it. And this isn’t a horror, there’s not likely to be anything that makes me try to kick.” Noor’s headset was lowering into position, suckering gently onto her temples and the points of her jaw. More files and safety checks were flickering in front of her face, blurred and reversed to Bridget. “That’s fine.” The gloves wrapped themselves around her bony fingers and lit up in a bangle of mostly green glints. “All looks good.”

“Pulse ox is amber.”

“Yes,” Noor said absently, flicking through deeper reports. “It was all yesterday too, they’re going to run remote checks late morning.”

“You don’t feel anything unusual?”

Noor looked very expressively at Bridget between her projections and the eye trackers on their fine articulated stalks.

“I can ask!”

“You can! No. Everything is fine. Get your hat, Dolores, we’re going on a bear hunt.”

Bridget snorted and pulled out her spectacles, flicked her hair out of her eyes and put them on.

Noor stood squarely against an insistent April wind, looking up a gravelled drive that divided into two to go round a heavily blooming magnolia tree and join up again at a flight of classically lichened grey steps.

“Always with the steps! We’re not even on a flood plain.”

Bridget, as her maid Dolores, stood a few paces behind Noor, between two implausibly white leather suitcases. Dolores was nearly fifteen centimetres shorter than Bridget and it always took her a few minutes to accustom herself to the change in angle.

"Is anyone expecting us, ma'am?" Dolores asked.

Noor swung round, her glossy hair swirling perfectly. "Of course, Dolly girl, only perhaps from the earlier train. Let's leave the trunks here, nothing can happen to them."

Bridget looked up at the house's facade as they passed underneath its first row of columns. Her critical eye wouldn't come through in Dolores's body language to Noor's viewers. Acceptably Doric, and a pleasantly cool grey. Scratches in the outer left of each one where someone had scrubbed away lichen but not treated the stone to prevent its regrowth.

At the door, a woman in a good but plain dress and an all-day hairstyle was welcoming Noor. The script made Dolores nod as she was introduced, and Bridget felt briefly dizzy.

"The later train was a much better option!" Noor finished gaily.

"Yes, ma'am." said Mrs Hanrahan. "We'll send Jerry out for your cases, come in. The family are taking tea."

The hall had good bones, Bridget thought, but too many people had had a hand in its decoration. Curled chairs with floral upholstery stood on geometric tile, and ancestors in oils looked balefully at descendants in watercolour. A hip-height brass vase with Indonesian patterns held willow branches in fluffy bud.

"I do wish you'd stop saying 'what he would have wanted', Eric." A sunburned blonde clanked her teacup into its saucer with a sound more resonant than should have been possible. "He wrote down what he wanted. Mr Ivers has read it. Mummy's read it. All you're saying is what you want, and I'm sick of it."

Eric, standing at the tall windowed doors and glowering out onto the side lawn, harrumphed.

"Noor!" the blonde exclaimed, leaping up from her chair. "We thought you'd been blown to Shropshire!"

Noor held out both her hands to be clasped. "Tosh, Lilian, you've never really believed I can cross running water."

"Eric, Gracie, this is my lovely Noor from school." Lilian said instead of answering.

Noor waved prettily at Eric at the window and a younger, slightly less blonde woman curled round a large blue hardback in another chair. "Hardly from school any more. From the Hornet, really."

"Gracie is far too young to know about the Hornet. Say the Friends of the Marseilles Ballet." Lillian cackled. "That's where I tell Mummy I know everyone from."

"Mummy doesn't believe you." Gracie turned a page, not looking up.

"Mummy lets a lot of things go by as though she believed them." Eric returned from the lawn windows to a chair nearest the tea table. "Would your guest like sandwiches, Lilian?"

"As you see, lovey, I'm the only one of us with anything approaching manners. Yes, our guests certainly would. And that seat. Banish yourself, cur."

Eric changed seats again, smiling at both Noor and Dolores and waving them graciously towards the cups and platters. "Dig in, ladies."

"Where do you learn such - no, I daren't. Eric has been turning himself into an artist." Lilian said in a stage whisper. "He comes in to meals with clay under his nails. We tell the staff it's shit, of course, but they'll all leave us when they find out the truth."

Gracie slammed her book closed. "Both of you are revolting!"

"Chance would be a fine thing." Eric said, delightedly. "Go and do the accounts again, Gracie, it'll settle your stomach."

“No, stay in here, Gracie, I’ll be good.”

Noor helped herself to two egg sandwiches and a cup of tea, quite as though she were used to serving herself. Bridget, as Dolores, took a cup of tea and a saucer and sat slightly further away from the conversation. Noor said "What were you saying your uncle would have wanted? Sorry, by the way."

Lilian grinned enormously and hid behind her tea.

Eric said "Oh, he was a plant collector. I was pointing out to my sisters that I'd spent more time with him in the greenhouses than they had."

Gracie harrumphed. Its cadence was so similar to Eric's harrumph that Bridget wondered if they were both doing an impression of someone else. "You've spent more time with him in the last two months, sunshine, but I'm the one who's been here while you've both been away making nothing of yourselves."

"While we've been? Brat! We've degrees!" Lilian threw a cherry tomato across the room. It hit Gracie on her flat chest and bounced onto the cover of her book.

"Two degrees and three courses of penicillin. I couldn't be more proud. I'll need to polish my shoes again to meet your biographers." Gracie popped the tomato into her mouth and ate it.

"When did you have penicillin?" Eric leaned towards Lilian, genuinely curious.

"Oh, do shut up. Neither of you have the contacts to do anything with the cultivars if you did have them, you'd either get bamboozled or knighted into poverty." Lilian rattled her teacup in its saucer again. "Uncle John knew damn well I'd be the most useful; if he hasn't left them to me it's a crying shame."

Noor said gently "Cultivars of?" and reached out for a third sandwich.

Bridget made sure Dolores was sitting upright with a neutral expression and flicked into viewer mode. The scene from Noor's angle was brighter, crisper and disorientingly packed with information. Wisps of hair escaping from Lilian's crown of braids were fizzing with implications - that she'd woken up late, that she was upset, that the quarrel between her and Eric had almost become physical before the guests arrived. A worn patch on the cushion beside Grace shone with financial downturn. There were mismatches in the lamps that Bridget hadn't noticed but that Noor saw as evidence of very recent rearrangement of the whole room.

Bridget felt Noor chew her third egg sandwich, glorying in its vinegary slide. It was overwhelming.

She flicked again back into the workroom in the apartment, and looked up at the screen over Noor's reclining, inert body. Viewer counts steady. Data rate steady. Everything biological in the green except pulse oximetry. Bridget leaned forward to check more closely on Noor's fingertips. Their tone was not more grey than usual.

She sat back and rejoined the group as Dolores.

"It's a polyploid cross. I don't know how much you know about genetics?" Eric asked Noor.

"Oh, a little." Noor said neutrally. Bridget suppressed a shiver.

"Well, the technicalities don't matter, except that he found a way of-"

Gracie interrupted. "That's just like you! Of course the technicalities matter! He didn't just wish the lime into existence! He spent years pollinating and grafting and keeping his notes and you would just waft it around London like it was sprouted from the head of Zeus!"

Eric rolled his eyes.

Lilian said "No, she's right, you animal, you can't separate the value of the product from the value of his work."

"A lime? A citrus?" Noor asked.

"A perfect lime." Grace said proudly. "It's thornless, seedless, easy to peel, has a higher vitamin content per kilogram than any other citrus, and a single dwarfed tree produces a hundred and fifty kilograms per year."

"Gosh!" Noor said, and poured herself more tea. "And the tree is here?"

Grace nodded. "There are eight trees already fruiting and seventeen more that will mature in the next two years. They're what biologists call clones of each other, their fruit will all be the same as long as they're kept in the same conditions. Which means here, in Uncle John's greenhouses, on the estate. Not in a poxy gallery."

"The value of the method," Eric said wearily, as though this had been gone over many times, "will increase while the right people see and taste the product in the right surroundings."

"And that's next to your grotesque art, is it?" Lilian sounded just as weary. "You think sipping wholesale gin while looking at a model of a split-open sylph - oh yes, I've seen - is going to make people think gosh, while I've got my cheque book out, I think I'll invest in this delicious garnish?"

"You shouldn't peer at things you refuse to understand."

"You shouldn't leave the blinds open on things you refuse to improve."

"Oh, if that's the criterion, one of us should nail your - oh, hello Mummy, you're awake."

The other four flinched and turned towards the door.

Bridget saw a tall lady with very neat hair and a face that had recently stopped crying after a long time.

"Darlings." the tall woman said, in a slightly croaky voice. "Miss  Katab, I'm so glad you were still able to visit. Hosting will do my girls a world of good while they're trapped here." Noor had stood up and was crossing the room to take her hands.

"Mrs Carr, I was so sorry to hear about your brother. If there's anything I can do, while I'm here or afterwards, to help?"

Mrs Carr smiled and began to speak but coughed, and it was so much rougher than her smooth appearance that Bridget flinched again. She wasn't sure if it had made Dolores flinch, but perhaps in the persona of a maid that would be fine.

"Dear girl. Thank you. It has been a bad time, but there's only administration left now. John was able to update everything while he was ill."

"Mummy, do come and sit down." Lilian said, shifting to her left almost three quarters of an inch and patting the settee beside her. Mrs Carr nodded, let go of Noor's hands and went to sit.

"Is the tea still warm or shall I ring?" Eric asked, a kinder note in his voice than he had bothered using for his sisters.

Lilian felt the pot with the back of her hand. "Yes, you may as well ring."

Noor said "You must let me know if I'm in the way of any discussions you need to have. I shan't mind going for a walk at all, at any time."

Lilian laughed. "Bless you, no. If you do miss anything by accident you can be sure I'll rush to tell you straight afterwards."

"Probably with silly voices and dramatic gestures." Gracie added. "In blank verse, if she's got time."

The housekeeper entered with a fresh teapot and six clean teacups on a wicker tray. "Good afternoon, Ma'am. Jerry has brought the guests' cases in and taken them up to the yellow rooms."

"Thank you!" Noor said, smiling up at her as she deftly cleared away the ruins of the earlier tray. Bridget, as Dolores, watched her neat hands with professional interest.

"I chose the yellow rooms for you," Gracie said unexpectedly. "It's got Lily's watercolours of Murano in it, I don't suppose you've seen them since they were framed."

"What a lovely thought." Lilian said, surprised. "God, Venice seems an awfully long time ago now."

Noor said, "It was only two years? Two and a half. A fabulous trip."

"Does that mean that Copenhagen was more than a year ago? It does! It must! Oh dear, I must get away again soon. You'll come with me?"

"Of course, you're excellent fun to travel with." Noor smiled, leaned forward and patted Lilian's wrist, collecting a cup of tea as she settled back into her chair. "Gracie, where would you like to visit?"

"Oh, she doesn't want to go anywhere, ever." Lilian said, waving dismissively across the room. "She wants to stay here and do the accounts."

"I would like to see the Highlands of Scotland." Gracie said, ignoring Lillian. "And the Isle of Man. But there's no hurry."

Mrs Carr looked at her younger daughter in evident surprise. "I didn't know you wanted to go to Scotland, dear."

"Yes, eventually. Perhaps once I'm quite grown up and have a car of my own. I don't need to see it at once, it's not as though it's going anywhere."

"And you don't want to leave here." Lilian prompted.

"No, not particularly, and I know you're getting at me, but I like it here. Especially now we can have anything we'd want from a city delivered twice a day. The Russian newspapers? Crevettes? The frames for your paintings, that's an African wood assembled by Turks and delivered by a man whose wife and children still live in Portugal. You don't need to travel to see the world."

Mrs Carr smiled at her. "You're very sweet, Gracie, but you can travel before you're grown up if you decide you want to."

"Well, one of us ought to take the cheaper option."

Eric said, "Hang on, hang on, I don't actually think you staying here and ordering books has been cheaper than my time in London."

"It has, darling, but nobody minds that a bit." Mrs Carr smiled brilliantly at him.

Eric sat back again deflated, while Lilian tried to stop herself laughing and only managed to snort horribly.

Bridget caught Noor's eye. "I could go and begin to unpack the cases, Miss?" Dolores suggested.

"Of course, Dolly. Mrs Hanrahan will show you where the yellow room is. Hang my umber silk for me for supper?"

Bridget, as Dolores, stood, bowed slightly to the family and left the room almost as quietly and smoothly as Mrs Hanrahan had.

In the hall and once out of Noor's eyeline, Bridget stretched her arms upwards and then outwards, trying to crack her shoulders. She checked the auto behaviours - if she left Dolores on script she would attend to the room and the luggage quite capably. Bridget flicked out and was back in the workroom.

The parallelogram of sun on Noor's white wall had moved while she'd been sitting still and quiet, listening to the family. She stood, stretching into her own height, and shook tension out of her arms.

It was always the same with historicals - mystery or romance or horror, everything came down to artificial money and the struggle. People trying to keep a house or gain a country or steal an advantage. Bridget had never been able to understand the motivation, no matter how many of her friends had explained it.

But Noor had always lived provided for, too, never been to Earth where scarcity still scuttled in unlit corners like a beetle. And she seemed to get along just fine with the ancient idea that there was only so much prestige to go around.

Bridget flicked into viewer mode, laying the Carr's house half-transparent over the real view of the clean white workroom, and watched Noor's statistics flicker and settle, the hundreds of people joining and leaving, joining and staying, tipping and leaving, letting their friends know they were watching.

Noor and Lilian stood and went out to the lawn, Eric dawdling behind and beside them with his hands shoved into his trouser pockets.

Noor tilted her head back to look up at the clearing sky and thousands of women took a clip of the delight she felt, the richness of the blue over points of dark cypress, the exact warmth of an April sun on healthy unprotected skin.

"Look!" Lilian said. "Do you still love magpies?"

On the lawn beside a sundial three birds glittered royally, each taking a turn on watch while the other two pecked energetically in the grass.

Eric said, "They'll be after those white grubs. Revolting things."

"For an artist, you're not very beautiful in the mind, are you?" Lilian took Noor's arm and bustled onward towards the treeline. "Come and see the lake. Grace and Uncle John and Mrs Hanrahan's nephew spent autumn clearing away the weeds and roots, it looked bare as a scab all winter but the new growth has come in and it's lovely. Mrs Hanrahan's nephew scrubbed the punt down to bare wood and repainted it."

Noor nodded with apparent interest, but watched her shoes crush fresh green grass and step between pink-tipped daisies. The lawn gave way to chervil and bedstraw between the trees, harshly clipped brambles throwing fresh green leaves a little way back from the path.

Glints of sun reflected up from the lake into willows as the three emerged on the far side of the wooded band. The freshly painted punt was tied to a little wharf, shining white with bright yellow-green edges, like bias binding on a child's dress. They stood for a moment to look.

A terrible scream cut through the peace.

Noor yelped and lost her footing, gripping hard onto Lilian's wrist. "Who in the world?"

Eric folded over laughing. Lilian flapped her free arm at him. "Anyone would think you were nine! Stop laughing, you horrible boy. Noor, darling, it's the peacock. I forgot to warn you." She pointed further down the lake's edge.

The peacock turned, self-assuredly, looked directly at Noor and shook its long tail up and out. Hundreds of blue and gold eyes stared her down, vibrating with sunlight.

"I never knew they were so big!" Noor breathed, still clutching Lilian, who looked at her oddly.

"I feel sure you’ve seen them before! Not in Hamburg? Or at Dominic's? Surely?"

"No, never. Or perhaps not this close. He's phenomenal."

Eric had stopped laughing and was looking at her with new approval.

"Look, back another two yards, there next to the mallows. That's one of his wives."

The peahen was ignoring him and them, busy in the leaves, the colour of a moss-smudged fallen log.

"He'll rattle at us as we get into the punt but he won't charge, he's all mouth and no trousers." Lilian said breezily.

"Oh, are we going out on the lake? I am a little cold already..." Noor sounded apologetic but half-turned towards Eric in anticipation.

"Of course I can go back up to the house to fetch you a wrap, Miss Katab." Eric said, either masking annoyance with good humour or doing an impression of someone annoyed.

"Excellent idea! Get mine as well? I think it's in the rocking chair in the kitchen. There's a good boy. And tell Mummy we'll be on the water."

Eric bowed deeply, his fair hair falling quite out of position, and walked cheerfully back through the trees to the lawn.

"Well!" Lilian said. "He wouldn't have gone on my say-so. Either he's sprouted a manner or he's noticed that you're pretty. I can't honestly say which would be less like him."

"Not generally keen on girls?" Noor asked, gently, folding her skirt around her legs and sitting cross-legged on the wharf.

The peacock rattled its tail display down and stalked away, trailing gold like a bride.

"No, but not like that. I asked him once and he hit me with a wellington boot. I do really mean he just doesn't notice us as girls." Lilian was checking over the punt, its glossy green painted pole and the knots in the rope at both ends. "I meant to sew cushions for this before spring arrived. I've cotton folded up ready in the sunroom, I just haven't begun."

"It must have been a disrupted few weeks."

"Oh, horrible. Mummy and John were both as ill as each other but she pulled through and he - well. As you see us. Mrs Hanrahan and Mr Ivers have been tremendous. None of us could run a household, although Gracie wants to. Lovey, can you look in that tin box, back to your left, and see if we've had the sense to leave matches?"

Noor obliged. "Mr Ivers runs the grounds?"

"Yes, and the tenancies, and our trusts. He says he's a jack of all trades but I know he thinks he's done well. Daddy thought a lot of him."

Noor lifted a matchbox aloft and shook it victoriously.

"Ah, but I can't train the brutes to stop putting the dead ones back in. Check in it."

Noor slid the little cardboard drawer out of its sleeve and started picking out burned matches. "What a ghastly habit."

"Isn't it? Sometimes I wonder if I'm meant to be in this family at all."

"I wouldn't go that far. But no, all these are used."

"Animals! I know where there are some, may I leave you here while I go back to the house? Eric is surely on his way back."

"As long as the peacock doesn't attack me." Noor said, laughing and settling back on her elbows.

Lilian took the matchbox from her. "I'll put these in the compost - oh, there's Eric coming now. Tell me afterwards if he says anything polite, I've a fresh notebook ready."

She set off between the trees the way they had walked down. Noor heard her call out. "I didn't mean that wrap, wasn't the yellow one on the chair in the kitchen?"

Eric said something but was still too far away to be clear.

"It's fine, I'll take this one, it's warm enough. I wonder where the yellow one can be, though. Noor is waiting while I go find matches for the lanterns."

"So what's that you're holding?"

"A handy box of burned wood, you questioning oik." Her voice faded.

Eric appeared between the trees, holding out a folded amber cloth. "Your girl Dolores said this one would do?"

Noor took it, beaming up at him. "Of course it will, thank you so much for fetching it."

He sat on the weather-grey wood beside her. "You sound as though you've been being polite for hundreds of years, you know."

"Well, Lily and I were both trained by women who had. Perhaps thousands."

"Didn't take with her though, did it?"

"Not to family, I suppose. She can do it when it suits her." Noor wrapped the shawl snugly around her elbows and leaned forward. "I forget which schools you attended. Were they the type to explain why a man should know how to be sweet?"

"Oof!"

"Well, if you're trying to sell sculptures, I mean."

Eric looked relieved. "Oh, I have a chap who can do the selling. Tell people what I meant when I made it, and all that. What Lily calls manners is rather more of a handicap when I'm on show as the artist. They prefer supporting a beast."

"Oh, I know the people you mean. Almost worth getting a wife so they can claim you beat her."

"You do know!" Eric clapped his hands in delight. "And you're funny, I hoped you would be. Well, I assume a wife will catch me at some point - she'll have to be willing to play along. Pretend not to have any money, and all that."

"You don't think you'll really be broke?"

Eric laughed, sounding much younger. "Not I. Not any of us. Mummy acts vague but she's put our inheritances where they'll work even if we don't. But the wife will have to have a suit of sacking for meeting patrons. And a wig with straws in it."

"You've got it planned out."

"And what about you? I know you don't paint, but you do see things, I can tell."

Noor smiled obscurely. "Perhaps seeing things as they are is a handicap to the arts. I wouldn't be able to put a message in a split-open sylph."

He winced. "That's only Lily's view, and it's not even finished."

Leaves scuffed and Lilian appeared behind them again, a dark orange shawl around her shoulders, brandishing a box of cooks' matches. "Lanterns on the lake for all! Gracie was right, if we can't go to Venice we can bring Venice to us. And my yellow shawl was in the kitchen, Eric lad, you can't have even looked." She struck matches and lit lanterns at either end of the little wharf as she spoke, and stepped into the punt to light two at each blunt end.

"Oh, it's lovely already!" Noor exclaimed, standing up. "Do you need me to do anything clever with this rope?"

"No, you just settle in on a bench here, look, give me your hand, it barely bobs about at all - yes, there's a girl. You just sit here and look decorative while I push us about. Masterful. Eric, get in. You don't need to look like anything."

"Thank goodness." Eric said calmly, stepping into the punt.

Bridget half-watched the viewer numbers climb with all the attention she could spare from Noor’s dazzling view. Everything was heightened - the roughness of the wooden seat under her backside and the palms of her hands, temperature differences fluttering in the air between the shade near the bank and the sun-warmed water further out.

An afternoon breeze broke the lake’s surface into a treasure chest. Willows all around them shifted, rippling over and over, hushing the peace that already hung heavy over the estate.

Six hundred more viewers. Six fifty. Eight hundred. A thousand. Women in orbitals and domes sharing clips of Noor’s intense joy as her face tilted up towards the pale blue sky, the weight of her shawl on her arms, the gloss of a tiny fly that landed on her pale skirt and lifted each of its feet in turn.

Lilian’s skill at moving the punt about the lake was complete. It curved in great wide spirals, the view ever changing, barely a splash to disrupt the sounds of the wind and the birds.

Two thousand.

Bridget blinked away the scene in her spectacles and stretched her legs out ahead of her, realising that her hips had locked up from sitting so still. She stood and bent over, trying to touch her toes with both hands equally, stretching until the pain in her lower back became a pull instead of a scream.

The apartment seemed very quiet after the lake. She could only hear the air circulators and a very distant hum of a cooling pipe working against the midday sun.

She shook out her ankles and hobbled back along the corridor to Noor's bedroom. On screen, Physio said, "Would you like to continue?"

"No. Let's watch Noor's show."

On the screen, distorted towards each edge, Noor looked upwards from her seat in the punt while Eric vaulted out onto the wharf and tied the rope around its post again. He was about to offer her a hand to step out but Lilian stepped past him and turned to cut him off, reaching out to Noor with a wicked grin.

"You complain when I don't have manners, and then you do this." Eric sounded too cheerful to be fully disgruntled.

They crossed back between the trees, the afternoon air golden with pollen around them. Noor saw the peacock and three peahens ambling up the lawn ahead of them, alongside two white ducks with yellow bills and a handful of plainer ducks.

"They get fed in the side yard." Lilian explained without being asked. "They know their schedule."

Again, a ghastly scream split the air. Noor looked at the peacock, but Eric and Lilian had both alerted. "What the devil?" Eric muttered, and broke into a run.

"That wasn't the peacock?" Noor said faintly.

"No, that was a person. Can you run?" Lilian let go of her arm and didn't wait for an answer, but took off up the lawn towards the tall glass doors.

Noor ran.

Bridget flipped her headset back on in time to catch the sensation.

After the first time Bridget experienced Noor running, half a year before in a horror set in an oceanfront tourist town, she’d cried. Noor had been flattered but baffled. “But that’s what running feels like!” she said.

“Nothing feels like that. Nothing has, honestly, ever.”

Noor reached the tall windowed doors at full pelt and took the length of the sitting room to slow down, nearly knocking over a side table as she cornered. She swung round the door frame and into the tiled hall only a few paces behind Lilian.

“Gracie? Mummy? What’s - Mummy!”

Mrs Carr was lying across the three lowest steps of the main staircase, her arms flung wide. Eric stood with his hand on Gracie’s shoulder, looking aghast. Gracie crouched above her mother, hands on her face. “I found her! She won’t answer!”

Mrs Hanrahan and a short man in corduroys both appeared at the top of the staircase and hurried down towards the family.

“Have you moved her, Gracie?”

“No!”

Eric said, “She’s breathing, look.”

“She won’t answer!”

“Did you see her fall? Did you hear it?” Mrs Hanrahan moved Grace gently to one side and felt at Mrs Carr’s throat without moving her neck.

“Was that her scream?”

“No, I screamed.” Grace said, looking guilty under her fear. “I came out of the study and saw her.”

“Was she with you upstairs, Mr Ivers? She wasn’t with me.”

The short man shook his head, eyes large with worry. “I was attending to the potatoes chitting in the south bathroom, I’m afraid.”

Lilian blurted a laugh and then clapped her hands over her mouth, horrified.

“Miss Carr, now is not the time!”

“I know, Mrs H, I’m sorry.”

“Eric, go up and see if the stair carpet is loose anywhere. Or if there’s anything for her to have tripped over.” He nodded and started up the stairs. Mrs Hanrahan must have concluded something about spinal injury, because she reached under Mrs Carr’s head and lifted it very gently. “Judith? Judith, if you can hear us, move anything.”

The hall filled with silence as everyone watched intently.

Mrs Carr did not move. The lace front of her dress fell and rose too slowly.

Eric called down from above. “There’s nothing she could possibly have fallen on. Not even a loose thread.”

“Perhaps she just went dizzy.” Noor suggested hopefully. “After a long illness?”

“Perhaps.” Eric sounded unconvinced, returning to join them. “Grace, you didn’t hear her fall?”

“I said I didn’t.”

“You didn’t say, and there’s no need to snap.”

“Why were you in the study?” Mr Ivers asked suddenly.

Gracie blushed. “I was putting a book back.”

“You still can’t lie without going puce?” Eric asked incredulously. “Are you really my sister?”

She leapt to her feet and punched him in the waist. “I was looking at the will, then! There! What use is that to you?”

“It was unlocked?” Mr Ivers said in horror.

Mrs Hanrahan said sharply, “I really don’t think now is the time for that, either. Eric, please carry J - your mother through to lie on the settee. Gently, although I think nothing’s broken.”

Everyone clustered round Eric as he lifted Mrs Carr securely and brought her to the settee. Lilian slid a pillow under her head as he settled her along it and folded her hands on her middle, so they wouldn't drop.

"So you've seen the will." Mr Ivers tried to say it quietly but it wasn't quiet enough.

"Why shouldn't she? What's in it?" Lilian snapped.

"Mummy gets everything." Grace said baldly.

"Oh!"

There was a pause, while the three siblings watched each other for reactions.

"You don't seem surprised, Eric."

"No, I think it makes a deal of sense."

"But they were both ill at once." Lilian sat down in a chair, abruptly. "They both did paperwork."

Mr Ivers coughed, uncomfortably. "The paperwork I helped them complete was merely an update to the lists of assets. Mrs Carr has always - I mean, this wasn't a recent change."

"So Uncle John didn't leave the limes to any of us."

"Well, he did, just we have to talk to Mummy about it. That's why I say it makes sense."

"And then Mummy fell down the stairs."

"Don't be revolting!" Gracie slapped Lilian hard on the upper arm.

"You know exactly what I mean. Eric's the eldest."

Noor stepped back silently to regard the group. Mrs Hanrahan noticed her movement.

"Miss Katab, would you be more comfortable in your rooms?"

"Don't go anywhere, Noor, we don't have any secrets. Mrs H, what does Mummy need?"

"I hope just time, Miss Carr. Someone should stay with her to watch she doesn't decline."

"Two people, at least." Lilian looked up at Eric sourly.

"Lily, think what you're saying!"

"Where was this shawl? It was in my room. I told you the yellow one was in the kitchen. You didn't need to go upstairs."

"Miss Katab's maid had to fetch her shawl from the case, I came upstairs for - how dare you, anyway?" Eric had gone pale. "What do you think, I fetched two scarves, chucked Mummy over the banisters and trotted out to go boating with you?"

"Gracie, did you hear Eric come in? How long were you in the study?"

"That's a great question, Gracie, when you were in the study, secretly, on your own, finding out that we didn't inherit anything, what did you hear?"

Gracie stood up, eyes wide. "Don't you dare!"

"Well, you saw the will this afternoon, you say. Must have been a shock. People... do things, after a shock."

"They make tea! They don't push their families down stairs!"

"They might if they wanted to run the greenhouses more than anything else in the world."

"I didn't say that!"

"Or maybe you heard Lilian come in? She must have been cursing a running commentary about matches, unless she was being very quiet for her own reasons. Mrs Hanrahan, did you hear her sweet tones? Because I assure you Mummy wasn't on the stairs when I came down again."

"I didn't go through the hall, I didn't see the stairs. The matches are from the mantel in the sitting room."

"So you say."

"And why on earth would I?"

"Why on earth would any of us! You started this."

Mrs Hanrahan slapped her hand hard onto the tea table. "That's enough! All of you! You should be ashamed!"

"Oh, why would they start now?" Gracie said bitterly.

"Including you, Miss Grace. Sneaking in to see the will; I would have thought better of you. Mr Ivers, it should have been locked away."

"I must have been - no, I don't know."

"Distracted." Mrs Carr said very faintly, without opening her eyes.

"Mummy!"

"Mummy, what happened, did you faint?"

"No. Stop him, Eric."

Mr Ivers froze, halfway to the sitting room door, as everyone's attention locked onto him. "Mrs Carr!"

Her eyes opened, and her focus wavered for a moment before she blinked and turned with a great effort to face into the room.

"Judith, is anything broken?" Mrs Hanrahan asked, leaning in and looking searchingly at Mrs Carr's reddened eyes.

"No, I only feel rattled. And shocked. Mr Ivers, I didn't see you, but I felt your hands push me. I don't understand."

Eric leapt towards Mr Ivers and caught him by the shoulders. "You?"

"I - no, I only - the potatoes?" This last came out in a whine as Eric lifted him up off the ground.

"Was it because of that silly argument?"

"What argument?" Lilian stood and stepped menacingly, leopard-like, towards Mr Ivers. "Who argues with our mummy?"

"You thought I pushed her down the stairs five minutes ago." Eric said, lowering Mr Ivers again but not letting go.

"Shut up. You thought I did."

"Children!" Mrs Carr said, irritation doing its best to show through her soft voice. "Ivers was frustrated with me for letting all of you follow your own whims. I'm not sure he wasn't right."

"What on earth've our choices got to do with him?"

“Oh, nothing on earth!” Mr Ivers spluttered, struggling against Eric’s grip. “I’m only running nine farms you’re old enough to have taken over.”

“You add up the rents! What’s there to run?” Lilian scoffed.

Gracie, still in her chair, said, “Don’t be rude just because you only know how to spend money.”

“All of you only know how to spend it!” Mr Ivers spat. “Him playing with paint in London, her dangling her legs around the Continent, you sitting in between two piles of books about botany.”

“And as I have already said, Mr Ivers,” Mrs Carr said, levering herself weakly upright on the settee, “I am entirely happy for the estate to run for the benefit of my children. I don’t know what you were hoping to accomplish, but the estate will no longer need your help. Eric, Mrs Hanrahan, please escort Ivers to an upstairs room with a lock, and call for the police.”

“Is that really what -”

“You nearly killed Mummy!” Gracie said, as though she’d only just realised, and Mr Ivers subsided. Eric alternately yanked and pushed him towards the hall, the housekeeper following with a glint in her eye that suggested she’d help as soon as she was out of sight.

The four women in the sitting room looked at the floor while the thumping sounds drew further away.

“I mean, it’s a bit extreme.” Lilian said, at length.

“Yes, darling?”

“Trying to off you so that - what? Eric would have to grow up?”

“It seems that way, darling, yes.”

Gracie moved over to the settee and nestled in to her mother’s side. “It’s only a year until I’m grown up, anyway. Eric can do his art, I shan’t mind.”

“Of course you don’t, darling.” Mrs Carr dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “Lilian, you didn’t really think?”

“God, Mummy, we thought you were dying, I had no idea you could hear us.”

“Perhaps we’ve all been overwrought.”

“Of course it’s that.” Lilian sounded relieved. “Yes, all these weeks of worry. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

Gracie harrumphed.

“Less of that, little sprout. Sneaking around digging in Uncle John’s papers. Even Mrs H was shocked. Mummy, can we really do what Ivers does? Did?”

“I should advertise for someone on a salary. We couldn’t do it and keep on with the things we like doing. You should travel more. I don’t want you to pay any attention to him, he’s a very small man.”

Noor said “Perhaps you should all travel. To the Highlands, for Grace. I think some time away from the house would be fine.”

Lilian looked across at her. “What, take Eric too?”

“You could both paint the scenery. Grace could - what would you do, Grace, collect specimens?”

“Maybe.”

Mrs Carr was nodding. “Yes, that’s a very good idea. I should be getting more fresh air, the doctor said.”

Mrs Hanrahan appeared at the door, her hair very slightly mussed and her white collar standing away from her neck. “Ma’am, Misses, the roasting lamb joint has burned while - while we were occupied, but I can cut some more cold meats for dinner if that will do.”

“Let us come through and help you, Mrs H.” Lilian said, going over to her to hold her hands. “You’ve been super.”

Mrs Hanrahan looked surprised and pleased. “Thank you, Miss Carr. It’ll be ready sooner if you help, certainly.”

Grace bounded to her feet, not noticing that she jolted her mother. “I’ll help! Are there new potatoes?”

Noor and Mrs Carr were left in the sitting room. They exchanged glances.

Noor asked, “How long had that argument been going on?”

“Seven years, or thereabouts. Eric was fifteen and Ivers came to me with a plan of tutoring him up to running the estate. I mean, can you imagine any of them?”

“Not really, no.” Noor smiled. “But you didn’t tell them he wanted that?”

“They’d have thought I wanted it, and they’d have stopped having fun to oblige me. I can’t think of anything worse.”

There was a pause.

“Forgive me, Miss Katab, I’ve just thought - I’m sure the cold meats Eve mentioned will be ham and gammon. Will that be acceptable?”

Noor blinked. “Oh! Yes, I would have reminded Lilian if I followed any, uh, restrictions. Thank you for asking.”

Bridget paused, Noor’s empty enteral feed canister in her hand, and stared at the display. She blinked.

“In that case, it will be minted new potatoes, carrots and peas from the hot beds that Gracie doesn’t care about, and gammon. Not quite as suitable as lamb, but I can imagine the oven was the last thing on Mrs Hanrahan’s mind.”

Bridget disconnected the clear tube above Noor’s hipbone and watched to make sure the valve was completely shut. She dropped tube and canister into waste management, sanitised her hands again and sat back in the assistant’s chair so that Dolores could help Noor change for dinner.