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chirruped to them in a language they seemed to understand. Though it would have been a sight to behold, Emily had never seen anything like this happen, she only imagined it.
    To her left, as Emily walked into the garden where the bonfire party was being held, she saw a monkey puzzle tree strung with coloured light bulbs, as dangerous – with its sharp prickles and damp electric wires – as a cheaply-made, faulty, imported, artificial Christmas tree. Next to the tree stood a tall, thin woman with curly hair who was another neighbour of Emily. Emily knew her name was Victoria and she had three male children who were fond of skateboarding. Victoria was preoccupied with chasing a cube of potato salad across a cream-coloured cardboard plate with a fragile-looking white plastic fork. She didn’t look up when Emily passed. One of her duffle-coated children stared out at Emily through a wolf mask while bending his knees and sliding his back up and down against his mother’s trouser leg, like a donkey relieving an itch on a fence post. Without taking her eye off her meal, his mother bent and murmured something to him, and he stood still and looked up at her, and away from Emily.
    It was a very cold, dark night and the air was damp, but there was no rain. The conditions were perfect for the party, and the garden was filled with people determined to enjoy themselves, clumped near the fire bowls and coloured lanterns for warmth and light, and ooh-ing and aah-ing at the stiltwalkers and jugglers. They swapped spurious, conflicting pieces of information: the stiltwalkers were Polish, the jugglers were Scottish, the artist who had made the giant head was Spanish; it was a squat party, it was illegal, it was sanctioned by the local council, it was bankrolled by Sir Paul McCartney. Most of it was nonsense but some of it was true.
    A man and a woman Emily didn’t know stood at the bottom of the three or four stone steps that led up to the door to the house, sipping at cinnamon-scented mulled wine from white plastic cups, and smoking cigarettes. They smiled at Emily as she passed and she saw that the woman’s lips were painted red, and her teeth had been stained the colour of blackberries by the wine. Her brown fuzzy hair had been teased into an unflattering triangular shape and she seemed to have pencilled her eyebrows in without looking in a mirror.
    ‘If you want the baby,’ said the man to the woman, ‘have the baby. Or sell it. I don’t care.’
    The woman shrieked. She seemed deranged. The man dropped his cigarette and grabbed at her. Emily stopped on the top step and turned, ready to intervene. But the woman let him put his arms around her. She smooched with him, rubbing the fox fur collar of her long black coat against his shoulder, and the two of them turned slowly in each other’s arms, like lovers dancing on a music box, as she began to sing the chorus of La Vie en Rose . People standing nearby recognised the tune and came a little closer to listen. Some of them clapped. Emily moved on.
    Inside the house was a grand hall so large that it was served by two staircases. The plaster on the walls was cracked, and there was a slight smell of mildew, but the flagstones on the floor had been scrubbed, and the place had been fixed up with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and original artwork on the walls. A man in a cape and a top hat swooshed past – he was young, no more than twenty-one or twenty-two, and he was wearing a false moustache, and he had rouged his cheeks. He tipped his hat at Emily: ‘Madame,’ he said. Emily smiled weakly. A heavy wooden door opened on the opposite side of the hall and, as two laughing teenage girls emerged, Emily saw that they had come from the kitchen, and she headed there to leave her offerings.
    The kitchen was bare, pretty much, except for a large porcelain sink and a cream-coloured fridge that was taller than Emily, and twice as wide. And there were two trestle tables, one stacked with