So saying, he dropped the piece of paper into the goldfish bowl. The worms wasted no time and quickly surrounded the small scrap. But instead of eating it they merely conglomerated around it, squirmed excitedly and explored the interloper with apparent great interest.

‘I had a wormery back in London, Uncle, and they didn’t like paper either—‘

‘Shh!’ murmured my uncle, and beckoned me closer to the worms.

Amazing!

‘What is?’ I asked, somewhat perplexed; but as soon as I looked at Mycroft’s smiling face I realised it wasn’t him speaking.

Astonishing! said the voice again in a low murmur. Incredible! Astounding! Stunning!

I frowned and looked at the worms, which had gathered themselves into a small ball around the scrap of paper and were pulsating gently.

Wonderful! mumbled the bookworms. Extraordinary! Fantastic!

‘What do you think?’ asked Mycroft.

‘Thesaurean maggots—Uncle, you never cease to amaze me!’

But Mycroft was suddenly a lot more serious.

‘It’s more than just a bio-thesaurus, Thursday. These little chaps can do things that you will scarce believe.’

He opened a cupboard and pulled out a large leather book with ‘PP’ embossed on the spine in gold letters. The casing was richly decorated and featured heavy brass securing straps. On the front were several dials and knobs, valves and knife switches. It certainly looked impressive, but not all Mycroft’s devices had a usefulness mutually compatible with their looks. In the early seventies he had developed an extraordinarily beautiful machine that did nothing more exciting than predict with staggering accuracy the number of pips in an unopened orange.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘This,’ began Mycroft, smiling all over and puffing out his chest with pride, ‘is a—‘

But he never got to finish. At that precise moment Polly announced ‘Supper!’ from the door and Mycroft quickly ran out, muttering something about how he hoped it was snorkers and telling me to switch off the lights on my way out. I was left alone in his empty workshop. Truly, Mycroft had surpassed himself.

Dazzling! agreed the bookworms.

Supper was a friendly affair. We all had a lot of catching up to do, and my mother had a great deal to tell me about the Women’s Federation.

‘We raised almost seven thousand pounds last year for ChronoGuard orphans,’ she said.

‘That’s very good,’ I replied. ‘SpecOps is always grateful for the contributions, although to be fair there are other divisions worse off than the ChronoGuard.’

‘Well, I know,’ replied my mother, ‘but it’s all so secret. What do all of them do?’

‘Believe me, I have no more idea than you. Can you pass the fish?’

‘There isn’t any fish,’ observed my aunt. ‘You haven’t been using your niece as a guinea-pig have you, Crofty?’

My uncle pretended not to hear; I blinked and the fish vanished.

‘The only other one I know under SO-20 is SO-6,’ added Polly. ‘That was National Security. We only know that because they all looked after Mycroft so well.’

She nudged him in the ribs but he didn’t notice; he was busy figuring out a recipe for unscrambled eggs on a napkin.

‘I don’t suppose a week went by in the sixties when he wasn’t being kidnapped by one foreign power or another,’ she sighed wistfully, thinking of the exciting old days with a whiff of nostalgia.

‘Some things have to be kept secret for operational purposes,’ I recited parrot fashion. ‘Secrecy is our biggest weapon.’

‘I read in The Mole that SpecOps is riddled with secret societies. The Wombats in particular,’ murmured Mycroft, placing his completed equation in his jacket pocket. ‘Is this true?’

I shrugged.

‘No more than in any other walk of life, I suppose. I’ve not noticed it myself, but then as a woman I wouldn’t be approached by the Wombats anyway.’

‘Seems a bit unfair to me,’ said Polly in a tut-tutting voice. ‘I’m fully in support of secret societies—the more the better—but I think they should be open to everyone, men and women.’

‘Men are welcome to it,’ I replied. ‘It means that at least half the population won’t have to make complete idiots of themselves. It surprises me that you haven’t been approached to join, Uncle.’

Mycroft grunted.

‘I used to be one at Oxford many years ago. Waste of time. It was all a bit silly; the pouch used to chafe something awful and all that gnawing played hell with my overbite.’

There was a pause.

‘Major Phelps is in town,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘I met him on the airship. He’s a colonel now but is still blasting the same old line.’

By an unwritten rule, no one ever spoke of the Crimea or Anton in the house. There was an icy hush.

‘Really?’ replied my mother with seemingly no emotion.

‘Joffy has a parish up at Wanborough these days,’ announced Polly, hoping to change the subject. ‘He’s opened the first GSD church in Wessex. I spoke to him last week; he says that it has been quite popular.’

Joffy was my other brother. He had taken to the faith at an early age and tried all sorts of religions before settling for the GSD.

‘GSD?’ murmured Mycroft. ‘What in heaven’s name is that?’

‘Global Standard Deity,’ answered Polly. ‘It’s a mixture of all the religions. I think it’s meant to stop religious wars.’

Mycroft grunted again.

‘Religion isn’t the cause of wars, it’s the excuse. What’s the melting point of beryllium?’

‘180.57 degrees Centigrade,’ murmured Polly without even thinking. ‘I think Joffy is doing a grand job. You should call him, Thursday.’

‘Maybe.’

Joffy and I had never been close. He had called me Doofus and smacked me on the back of my head every day for fifteen years. I had to break his nose to make him stop.

‘If you are calling people why don’t you call—‘

‘Mother!’

‘He’s quite successful now, I understand, Thursday. It might be good for you to see him again.’

‘Landen and I are finished, Mum. Besides, I have a boyfriend.’

This, to my mother, was extremely good news. It had been of considerable anguish to her that I wasn’t spending more time with swollen ankles, haemorrhoids and a bad back, popping out grandchildren and naming them after obscure relatives. Joffy wasn’t the sort of person who had children, which kind of left it up to me. In all honesty I wasn’t against the idea of kids, it was just that I wasn’t going to have them on my own. And Landen had been the last man to have remotely interested me as a possible life partner.

‘A boyfriend? What’s his name?’

I said the first name that popped into my head.

‘Snood. Filbert Snood.’

‘Nice name.’ My mother smiled.

‘Daft name,’ grumbled Mycroft. ‘Like Landen Parke-Laine, come to that. Can I get down? It’s time for Jack Spratt’s Casebook.’

Polly and Mycroft both got up and left us. Landen’s name didn’t come up again and neither did Anton’s. Mum offered me my old room back but I quickly declined. We had argued ferociously when I had lived at home. Besides, I was almost thirty-six. I finished my coffee and walked with my mother to the front door.

‘Let me know if you change your mind, darling,’ she said. ‘Your room is the same as it always was.’

If that were true the dreadful posters of my late teenage crushes would still be up on the wall. It was a thought too hideous to contemplate.