Excerpt from Mrs. Engels by Gavin McCrea, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"It won't be long now before they have us cleaned out."

I take the cabby's hand and kick my skirts out so I can land my foot without stepping on my hem. I've bare touched down before the door of the house flies open and two dogs come surging out with Tussy close on their tails: "There you are!"

The larger of the dogs runs to Frederick and puts its paws up on his good waistcoat. Frederick bends and allows himself to be licked on the cheek and the ear. For a man so neat he has a queer love for what roots and roves. The other dog, the ratty-looking one, comes to make circles around me. I stand frozen while it sniffs at my privy parts.

"Don't be frightened." Frederick laughs. "He's harmless."

I give him a look that says I'll scream and make an episode if it's the only way.

Snorting, he takes the animal by the collar and shoos it off. "Come on, Whiskey, come away from that mean woman."

Tussy kisses Frederick on the lips and tells him he's late getting to London, twenty years late. He laughs and says something in the German, and she tosses her head and speaks back to him in the same, and between them now they release a mighty flow of language, one so foreign that, if you were to judge from their faces and features only, you wouldn't know what they were feeling.

When their business is done, Tussy comes and wraps herself round me, making me feel the child, for she's taller than me now and has a bust bigger. "At last you're here, Aunt Lizzie, at last."

"Tussy, my sweet darling, let me see you." I hold her out and look her up and down. She has her hair in braids and a jewel at the neck and a dress that shows a new slightness of waist. Only a year since her last visit to Manchester—what a prime and drunken affair that was!—and yet, from the look of her, it'd be easy to believe thrice that time has hurtled away. Fifteen and out of her age, never to be a child again; it'd break your heart.

"You've grown all out of knowledge," I says.

"Have I?" she says, and does a twirl, and curtsies. She sticks out her tongue and winks as she rises from the dip.

I swat her on the arm with my glove. "You're getting more and more like your father."

"You mean, more like a Jewess?"

I laugh. She hasn't lost her mouth. "Mind your father doesn't hear you saying such things."

Frederick instructs the cabby to take our belongings inside, suitcases first, boxes and gifts last. Tussy takes my arm and walks me up the path to the porch.

"I have missed you so, Aunt Lizzie."

"And I've missed you, child."

"And now, finally, we get to be neighbors."

"Aye, it's been a long time coming."

"You know, it's only twenty-two minutes away. Your new house, from here. I've been there often and have counted the distance. Door to door, twenty-two minutes on foot."

"Is that all? A mere hop and a skip."

"We shall do all sorts together, shan't we, Aunt Lizzie?"

"There'll be time for it all. We'll not lack for things to do, nor time to do them in."

The rest of them are stood in the hall passage: the family display. Mother, father, and eldest daughter, biding to bask in the honor they know we must feel to be connected with them. Frederick walks in and is greeted by more of the German, and more again, till the air is full of it. I leave them to have their minute. Lingering on the matting, I marvel at the tree they have in a tub on the porch.

"A tree," I says, "in a tub." I tug on Tussy's sleeve. "I wouldn't let that grow any farther or it'll burst out."

Giving vent to a howl of laughter, Tussy pulls me up the step and presents me as the ringmaster presents his lioness: hip cocked back, arms stretched out, fingers twinkling, a giant grin. Young Janey comes forward first and she's a winsome sight to see. It's a beauty that might need a little bringing about, true, but it's a beauty all the same, and I wouldn't take it from her. Next comes Karl, his whiskers like bramble on my face, his lips like dried-out sausage.

This extract is taken from the novel Mrs. Engels, which is available now from Catapult Books and appears courtesy of Scribe Publications.