Blood pooled on the white China plate, around the vegetables. Mr Graham sawed the beef. Just the way he liked it. The doorbell rang. Mrs Graham rose from the table; dabbed her mouth with a napkin.

‘Let Annabelle get it,’ Mr Graham said.

‘She’s gone for the weekend, dear. Something about the children.’

Thank God we never had children, thought Mr Graham, a thought he repeated in his mind whenever they were mentioned. He chewed his beef and watched his wife leave the dining room.

Mrs Graham strode down the long hall of Elysian Manor, her heels clicking on the parquet floor, under the glare of long dead beasts and dusty faces from faded photographs.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ she muttered, when the doorbell rang again.

She opened the door. A gang of boys stood on the porch, their faces shining in the dark.

‘Penny for the guy?’ the tallest said.

Mrs Graham put her spectacles on, hung from her neck for convenience.

‘What in blazes?’ she said.

‘Penny for the guy?’ he repeated and smiled with little rotten teeth. The other boys looked up at Mrs Graham expectantly.

‘It’s October,’ she said, and at that moment noticed a ginger boy at the back with a shopping trolley and a mannequin jammed in the toddler seat. ‘What the devil is that?’

‘That’s Master Pye,’ the boy said. ‘I’m Jack. And these are—’

‘Now listen here,’ Mrs Graham said. ‘I don’t care who you are. It’s late. My husband and I are eating. Kindly run along and bother someone else.’ And with that she closed the door and started on down the hall.

The doorbell rang.

When she opened the door Jack said:

‘Can we use your telephone?’

‘Whatever for?’

‘A private matter, dear.’

Gypsies, thought Mrs Graham. Mrs. Runcorn had warned her in Luigi’s delicatessen. ‘They’re sleeping rough in Tiller Oak Wood. Hundreds of them. Like ants. Came round asking for alms. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. Lucky my Richard was over to give them what-for.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ Mrs Graham said, ‘If you don’t run along I shall have some strong words for your parents.’

And with that she slammed the door. When she was halfway down the hall, the bell rang again. Mr Graham shuffled out from the dining room, supported by his cane. He said:

‘What in blazes is going on?’

‘Gypsies,’ Mrs Graham said. ‘Twice I asked them to leave but they pay me no mind. Perhaps you could have a word with them, dear.’

‘We’re not gypsies,’ a mouth in the letterbox said.

Mr Graham opened the door and five boys smiled with dirty little teeth. He looked at the trolley and the mannequin: the shock of blonde hair, plastic flesh, and ruby lips. ‘What on earth?’

‘O that’s Master Pye,’ Jack said. ‘I was just telling the old bird.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Can we use one of your toilets?’

Mr Graham shook his head and sighed. He placed a hand on the door but the ginger boy rammed the trolley through the doorway and Mr Graham crumpled onto the wooden floor. Mrs Graham rushed to her husband and helped him to a chair by the telephone desk. By now the boys had collected in the hall and the door was closed by the last, a dirty blonde boy that trailed mud and wet leaves into the house.

‘Outrageous!’ Mrs Graham cried.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’ Mr Graham said.

‘As I was saying,’ Jack began, ‘I’m Jack, this is Master Pye and this is the rest of the squad: Rutger, Hastings, Sinclair and Faron.’

The boys all nodded.

Mr Graham was breathing heavily. Mrs Graham reached for the telephone. Jack grabbed the cane and whacked the receiver from her hands.

‘O, God,’ Mr Graham cried. ‘Help!’

Jack said:

‘From now on you will speak only with Master Pye’s permission.’

Mrs Graham looked at Master Pye, forever smiling. The rest of its face was locked in grimace, as though smiling through pain. She tried to collect the thoughts clouding her mind. This was absurd. A tranquil evening so quickly spun. The boys had seemed so young at the door but perhaps she had underestimated them. Or had she grown so old and out of touch, feeling at this moment every one of her seventy years. And Mr Graham sitting there in shorts, his shin bones poking out from his flesh like the shells of razor clams. He said:

‘What—’

Jack cracked him on the shins with the cane. Mr Graham howled in pain, clutching his legs.

‘Master Pye,’ Mrs Graham said, stifling a tremor. ‘Permission to speak?’

‘Granted,’ a muffled voice said. It was the ginger boy, Faron, hand over mouth.

‘What do you REALLY want?’ Mrs Graham said.

On Monday morning Annabelle parked her car in the Elysian grounds and made her way along the gravel path to the manor. It was still dark, sleepy light from the horizon fell on the pond in patches. And always the creaking of the five metal swans swaying in the breeze, atop thirty-metre poles.

She rang the doorbell. Mrs Graham answered, opening the door a crack. She told Annabelle that she and her husband had decided her services were no longer required. That she was sorry and there was three month’s severance in the envelope she handed Annabelle.

‘Is everything all right, Mrs Graham?’ Annabelle said, confused and near tears. And then she spotted the mannequin watching from the reception room window. ‘What is that?’

‘O that’s Master Pye,’ Mrs Graham said.

July 2021