Hamish's expression was interesting.

It dawned on me that although in this reality there had been no Great War, nor any of the subsequent difficulties, there had also been none of the alterations in the position of women in society. The Captain, who was pretending to read one of the larger journals looked at me over the top of it and raised an eyebrow.

I was distracted for a moment - the hours I have spent trying to make my eyebrows work independently to achieve just that result.

The man in black - who was some sort of policeman - cleared his throat. 'I expect that the ladies will be of great help to us, we will have a great deal to organise, and there is nothing like the fair sex to see that everything gets done.' He had retained his black leather hat, and as he nodded in my direction and the wide brim partly eclipsed his face, he winked at me.

From this distance in time it is difficult to remember those first hours of being with multiple versions of myself. As an avid reader of science fiction in my youth I had, on a philosophical level, already considered all sorts of eventualities which had become real experiences.

I can only remember that it was not at all disconcerting, and perhaps it gave me some insight into what separated twins experience on being reunited.

I was rather surprised to see that all three of the men had silver hair, though the copper had a beard which still retained some darker hairs. It was logical, as my - our - father's hair had turned silver very early on. They were very alike - rather more alike than we three women. Apart from the beard the three men looked identical - had they exchanged clothing they would have been distinguishable only by their accents. The civil servant had good crystal vowels, the copper must have lived in the Midlands longer than I did, and the man in DPM was a part time soldier and full time chemistry teacher, with a northern accent.

We were saved from what might have been a petulant protest by myself as just them there was a tap at the door, and we were invited to go to take lunch.

The woman wore brown garments, a just above ankle length sack like dress with sleeves to the elbow. A plain white cap and apron indicated her position in the household was fairly low - I soon learned to read the hierarchy of caps and aprons. She came in and curtsied to Hamish, which we soon came to realise was entirely normal.

We went out through the lower cellar then up into the ground floor of the House. There was a room next to the kitchen where we could wash our hands before eating, and as I was the first to do this, I went into the kitchen - first of all to be nosy, and secondly to unpack my lunch, which I had forgotten about until them.

There were some twenty rather elderly women around, and they soon came to look at what I had placed on the long wooden kitchen table and exclaim over the different foods.
'Strawberries! I haven't seen strawberries in thirty years.'
'Do you not grow them here?' I inquired.
'Grow them? It is not allowed to grow anything.'
'There are no plants, anyway, so we could not even if we dare.'
'Well - if I scrape the seeds off these, then there could be plants - and if they were grown in the walled garden - who would know?'
They seemed unable to comprehend the concept of disobedience.
I quickly removed seeds from the berries, and gave the rather mangled remains to the women. There was about half a berry each, but they exclaimed over them, and a couple were moved to tears.

The housekeeper recollected the meal, and chivvied the staff back to the serving of it, and to the washing up from a meal already eaten - the staff ate earlier than the gentlemen, and I was encouraged to go into the dining room to join them and the others of myself so we could be served.

There were five men in the Committee to Overthrow Fashion Furs, as we came to call them. They were all related, for it suited Fashion Furs to deal with people who had obligations to eachother. With the loss of men in the hunting it was necessary for there to be a clan system, with older men and survivors as the heads of increasingly large groups of wives, widows and children.

We sat down to eat what was possibly the worst meal I'd eaten in my life up to that point.