13
When we pulled up in William Elvyng’s driveway at two o’clock the following afternoon, we found my respected parent already present. She sat in the driving-seat of a beaten-up red Peugeot that looked about five hundred years old, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel and generally radiating impatience.
‘Mum,’ I said, when we had clambered out of our respective cars. ‘I thought you’d have a driver.’
Her missing hand was looking way better than it had the last time I’d seen her. It had healed pretty well, and was now a neat, rather than a bloodied, stump. Being Delia, she was totally unselfconscious about it, which was good. But ignoring it to the point of driving herself around one-handed might, I thought, be carrying insouciance a bit far.
‘Why would I want a driver?’ she s
