However, at the same time she is in charge of the household, tending to her father Harry, who writes articles on literature; her twelve-year-old sister Persephone ("Perse"), who also goes to St. Winifred's; and her five-year-old brother Nicholas Anthony ("Trubshaw"). Their large house, The Old Vicarage, has not been renovated in a long time, which has started to show in places and does not make life easier for them. (They have named the spare bedrooms after the problems that have befallen them: Dry rot, Woodworm, the Mildew Room.) While they are slowly adjusting to their new life without Mother, Clementine Kemble occasionally informs them about her current whereabouts—they get cheery postcards from such faraway places as Marrakesh, Cairo, Istanbul, Samarkand, Kuala Lumpur, Eureka, California, Los Angeles, and Acapulco.