We had family under our feet constantly. Helena and I had produced two daughters, one now two and a half and one six months. So first we had my mother weaseling in to check we had not killed her darlings while in barbarian territory, then Helena's elegant mama sailed up in her sedan chair to spoil the children too. Our mothers each expected to have all the attention, so as each arrived, the other had to be shepherded out some other way. We did this without making it obvious. If Pa walked in to mouth more excuses about the grinder, Ma would openly storm off, they had lived apart for nearly thirty years and took pride in proving it had been a wise decision. If Helena's mother were here when her father dropped by, he liked to play at being invisible so he had to be shunted into my study. It was tiny, so it was best if I were out at the time. Camillus Verus and Julia Justa did live together, with every sign of fond toleration, yet the senator always gave the impression he was a hunted man.

I wanted to discuss with him my summons from Italicus. Unfortunately when he called I was not at home, so he had a snooze in my one-man den, played with the children, drank us out of borage tea, and left. Instead, I was stuck with breakfast with his noble offspring. When Helena and her brothers assembled together, I began to see why their parents had allowed all three to leave their large but shabby home in the Twelfth District and share my desperate life in the much lower-class Thirteenth. The boys still lived at home, in fact, but hung around our easygoing house a lot.