I was in fact wearing a light tunic and old sandals. I had washed but not shaved; I could not remember whether I had combed my curls. Acting casual was instinctive. So was defying orders from Silius Italicus. Helena's expression made me squirm a bit, though not much.

We were at breakfast in our house at the foot of the Aventine. This edifice had belonged to my father and was still being renovated to our taste. It was six months since any fresco painters had bothered to show up; their pigment odours had faded and the building had reverted to nature. It had the faint musty whiff that afflicts elderly homes which have suffered flooding in the past because they were built too close to the river (the Tiber was a mere twenty feet away). The building had mostly lain empty while we were in Britain – though I could tell Pa had been camping out here as if he still owned the place. He had stuffed the ground floor with pieces of hideous furniture that he claimed were in `temporary storage'. He knew we were back in Rome now, but was in no hurry to shift out his impedimenta. Why should he? He was an auctioneer and we had provided a free warehouse. I looked for anything worth pinching, but no reasonable customer would bid for this junk.

That didn't mean it would not be sold. Pa could convince a ninety year-old childless miser that he needed an antique cradle with its rattle-hook missing – and that the victim could afford to have its rockers renovated by a deadbeat carpenter to whom Pa just happened to owe a favour.

`I'll throw in this fine Alexandrian rattle,' my father would say magnanimously (forgetting to do so, of course).

Since we could not climb into our dining room until my parent removed half a huge stone corn grinder, we ate upstairs in the roof garden. This was four storeys away from the kitchen, so we dined on mainly cold buffets. For breakfast, that posed no problems. Ever bighearted, Pa had lent us a double-jointed Bithynian slave to carry up the trays. Bread rolls and honey survived, even when the sour-faced nonentity took his time. He was useless. Well, Pa would have held on to him, had he been any good.