Malcolm grinned at hera distinct sign of revival.

The three ex-wives eyed each other warily. Any mushy idea that the near-death of the man they'd all married and the near-destruction of the house they'd all managed might have brought them to sisterly sympathy was a total non-starter.

"Malcolm can come and stay with me, "Joyce said.

"Certainly not," Alicia said instantly, clearly alarmed. "You can take your precious Ian. Malcolm can go with Gervase."

"I won't have it," Vivien said sharply. "If Malcolm's going anywhere, it's fitting he should stay with Donald, his eldest son."

Malcolm looked as if he didn't know whether to laugh or scream.

"He's staying with me," I said. "If he wants to."

"In your flat?" Ferdinand asked.

I had an appalling vision of my flat disintegrating like Quantum but, unlike Quantum, killing people above and below. "No, not there," I said.

"Then where, darling?" Joyce asked.

"Wherever we happen to be."

Lucy smiled. It was the sort of thing she was happy with. She pulled her big brown cloak closer round her large form and said that it sounded a thoroughly sensible proposal. The others looked at her as if she were retarded instead of the brains of the tribe.

"I'll go wherever I want to," Malcolm said flatly, "and with Ian."

I collected a battery of baleful glares, all of them as ever afraid I would scoop their shares of the pool: all except Joyce, who wanted me to.

"As that's settled," she said with a hint of maternal smugness which infuriated all the others, "I want to see just how bad the damage is to the house." She looked at me briefly. "Come along, darling, you can show me."

"Run along, mummy's boy," Gervase said spitefully, smarting from having been spurned by Malcolm.

"Poor dear Ian, tied to mummy's apron strings." Berenice's effort came out thick with detestation. "Greedy little Ian."

"it isn't fair," Serena said plaintively. "Ian gets everything, always. I think it's beastly."

"Come on, darling, "Joyce said. "I'm waiting."

I felt rebellious, tried to smother it, and sought for a different solution.

I said to them. "Come and see what really happened here. You can all come."

The superintendent had in no way tried to break up the family party but had listened quietly throughout. I happened to catch his eye at that point, and he nodded briefly and walked back beside Malcolm as everyone slowly moved round to the rear of the house.

The extent and violence of the damage there silenced even Gervase. All of the mouths gaped: in all eyes, horrified awe.

The chief fireman came over and with a certain professional relish began in a strong Berkshire accent to point out the facts.

"Blast travels along, the lines of least resistance," he said. "This is a good strong old house, which I reckon is why so much of it is still standing. The blast, see, travelled outwards, front and back from a point somewhere near the centre of the main upper storey. Some Of the blast went upwards into the roof, bringing down some of those little attic bedrooms, and a good bit of blast, I'd reckon, blew downwards, making a hole that the upper storey and part of the attic just collapsed into, see what I mean?"

Everyone saw.

"There's this wall here" – he pointed to the one between what had been the sitting-room and was still the dining-room – "this wall here, with the chimney built into it, this is one of the main load- bearing walls. It goes right up to the roof. Same the other side, more or less. Those two thick walls stopped the blast travelling sideways, except a bit through the doorways." He turned directly to Malcolm. I've seen a lot of wrecked buildings, sir, mostly burned, it's true, but some gas explosions, and I'd say, and mind you, you'd have to get a proper survey done, but I'd say, on looking at this house, that although it got a good shaking you could think of rebuilding it. Good solid Victorian house, otherwise it would have folded up like a pack of cards."

"Thank you," Malcolm said faintly.

The fireman nodded. "Don't you let any fancy demolition man tell you different, sir. I don't like people being taken advantage of when they're overcome by disasters. I've seen too much of that, and it riles me. What I'm telling you is a straight opinion. I've nothing to gain one way or the other."

"We're all grateful," I said. He nodded, satisfied, and Gervase finally found his voice. "What sort of bomb was it?" he asked.

"As to that, Sir, I wouldn't know. You'd have to wait for the experts." The fireman turned to the superintendent. "We shut Off the electricity at the meter switch in the garage when we got here, and likewise turned off the mains water under a man-hole cover out by the gate. The storage tank in the roof had emptied through the broken pipes upstairs and water was still running when we got here, and all that water's now underneath the rubble. There's nothing I can see Can start a fire. If you want to go into the upper storey at the sides, you'll need ladders, the staircase is blocked. I can't vouch for the dividing walls up there, we looked through the windows but we haven't been inside, you'd have to go carefully. We didn't go up to the attic much, bar a quick look from up the ladder. But down here, you should be all right in the dining-room and in that big room the other side of this mess, and also in the kitchen and the front room on the far side."

"MY office," Malcolm said.

The superintendent nodded, and I reflected that he already knew the layout of the house well from earlier repeated visits.

"We've done as much as we can here," the fireman said. "All right if we shove off now?"

The superintendent, agreeing, went a few steps aside with him in private consultation and the family began to come back from suspended animation.

The Press Photographers moved in close rand took haphazard pictures of us, and a man and a woman from different papers approached with insistent questions. Only Gervase seemed to find those tolerable and did all the answering. Malcolm sat down again on the pine chair, which was still there, and gathered his blanket around him, retreating into it up to his eyes like a Red Indian.

Vivien, spotting him, went over and told him she was tired of standing and needed to sit down and it was typically selfish of him to take the only seat, and an insult to her as she was the senior woman present. Glancing at her with distaste, Malcolm got to his feet and moved a good distance away, allowing her to take his place with a self-satisfied smirk. My dislike of Vivien rose as high as her cheekbones and felt as shrewish as her mouth.

Alicia, recovered, was doing her fluttery feminine act for the reporters, laying out charm thickly and eclipsing Serena's little- girl Ploy. Seeing them together, I thought that it must be hard for Serena to have a mother who refused to mature, who in her late fifties still dressed and behaved like an eighteen-year-old, who for years had blocked her daughter's natural road to adulthood. Girls needed a motherly mother, I'd been told, and Serena didn't have one. Boys needed one. too and Joyce wasn't one, but I'd had a father all the time and in the end I'd also had Coochie, and Serena hadn't had either and there lay all the difference in the world.

Edwin was having as hard a time as Donald in putting on a show of rejoicing over Malcolm's deliverance.

"It's all very well for You," he said to me bitterly, catching my ironic look in his direction. "Malcolm despises me – and don't bother to deny it, he makes it plain enough – and I don't see why I should care much for him. Of course, I wouldn't wish him dead…"

"Of course not," I murmured.

"… but, well, if it had happened…" he stopped, not actually having the guts to say it straight out.

"You'd have been glad?" I said.