Me: You’re very beautiful, Nell.
Nell: What have you done?
Me: I haven’t done anything. I was being nice.
Nell: I was talking to your sister Charlotte.
Me: And?
Nell: And the next time you visit The House on the Corner we’re coming with you.
Me: It won’t be until next year.
Nell: We need to see it.
Me: Fine. You will.
Nell: I have to choose my bedroom.
Me: I thought you might like to sleep in our bedroom in the new house like you used to when we lived in Oxfordshire.
Nell: I’m not sharing a bed with David.
Me: You quite like snuggling up to him.
Nell: That’s because he usually smells of bacon.
Me: We might even splash out on new beds.
Nell: Talking of David, you need to have a word with him about storytelling.
Me: Has he started writing again? I’m still hoping he’ll write another book after ‘Meals I Ate By Mistake.’
Nell: No. He’s been telling tall stories.
Me: Oh dear.
Nell: Harriet asked him to come into Kingsbridge to go Christmas shopping with her, and he said he was too busy rolling pigs in blankets.
Me: Fair enough.
Nell: Have you ever heard such nonsense?
Me: It isn’t nonsense, Nell.
Nell: We don’t have any pigs here, and if we did, and they were cold, we would give them cardigans and woolly hats like everyone else.
Me: They’re not actual pigs.
Nell: And who rolls someone up in a blanket unless they’re a newborn baby? He’ll be putting them in a manger next.
Me: The blankets are slices of bacon.
Nell: I beg your pardon?
Me: And the pigs are sausages. Pigs in blankets are a Christmas treat. Like devils on horseback.
Nell: Stop right now. Pigs were enough.
Me: Sorry.
