These and other associations came into Miranda's mind on any of the rare 
moments when she came into contact with something of Quality, and if she didn't 
make a conscious effort to stop the process, she would end up remembering just 
about everything that had happened to her during the first years of her 
life—the Mercedes taking her to private school, the crystal chandelier 
that would ring like fairy bells when she climbed up on the huge mahogany 
dinner table to tickle it, her paneled bedroom with the four-poster bed with 
the silk-and-goosedown duvet. For reasons still unspecified,
Mother had moved them far away from all of that, into what passed for poverty 
these days. Miranda only remembered that, when she had been physically close to 
Father, Mother had watched them with more vigilance than seemed warranted.