‘Clarice Groan,’ said Cora sternly, rising from her chair, ‘you know too much.’

Clarice did not answer, but bit her thin, loose lower lip.

‘We usually go much longer with our sewing, don’t we, Cora?’ she said at last. ‘We sometimes go on for hours and hours, and we nearly always talk a lot, but we haven’t today, have we, Cora?’

‘No,’ said Cora.

‘Why haven’t we?’

‘I don’t know. Because we haven’t needed to, I suppose, you silly thing.’

Clarice got up from her chair and smoothed her purple satin, and then looked archly at her sister. ‘I know why we haven’t been talking,’ she said.

‘Oh no, you don’t.’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Clarice. ‘I know.’

Cora sniffed, and after walking to a long mirror in the wall with a swishing of her skirts, she readjusted a pin in her hair. When she felt she had been silent enough:

‘Oh no, you don’t,’ she said, and peered at her sister in the mirror over the reflection of her own shoulder. Had she not had forty-nine years in which to get accustomed to the phenomenon she must surely been frightened to behold in the glass, next to her own face, another, smaller, it is true, for her sister was some distance behind her, but of such startling similarity.

She saw her sister’s mouth opening in the mirror.

‘I do,’ came the voice from behind her, ‘because I know what you’ve been thinking. It’s easy.’

‘You think you do,’ said Cora, ‘but I know you don’t, because I know exactly what you’ve been thinking all day that I’ve been thinking and that’s why.’