The room was brightly lit, and I was able to see clearly what I had only sensed on thereof and in the corridors: that the hem of her skirt hung two inches above the floor no matter how she moved, and that there was nothing between the hem and the floor at all. She waved me to a little footstool covered with needlepoint and said, “Sit down,” and when I had done so, glided across to a wing-backed rocker and sat facing me. After a moment she asked, “What’s your name?” and when I told her she cocked an eyebrow at me and started the chair in motion by pushing gently with her fingers at a floor lamp that stood beside it. After a long time she said, “And what does he call you?”

“He?” I was stupid, I suppose, with lack of sleep.

She pursed her lips. “My brother.”

I relaxed a little. “Oh,” I said, “you’re my aunt then. I thought you looked like my father. He calls me Number Five.”

For a moment she continued to stare, the corners of her mouth drawing down as my father’s often did. Then she said, “That number’s either far too low or too high. Living, there are he and I, and I suppose he’s counting the simulator. Have you a sister, Number Five?”

Mr Million had been having us read David Copperfield, and when she said this she reminded me so strikingly and unexpectedly of Aunt Betsey Trotwood that I shouted with laughter.

“There’s nothing absurd about it. Your father had a sister—why shouldn’t you? You have none?”

“No ma’am, but I have a brother. His name is David.”

“Call me Aunt Jeannine. Does David look like you. Number Five?”

I shook my head. “His hair is curly and blond instead of like mine. Maybe he looks a little like me, but not a lot.”

“I suppose,” my aunt said under her breath, “he used one of my girls.”

“Ma’am?”

“Do you know who David’s mother was, Number Five?”