The car drew up and Joan rushed outside. “There you are!” She lifted him from the rich interior of the Rolls. “What’s wrong with his eyes?”

Duncan hurried after him. “It looks like an infection, ma’am.”

They were red and puffed. Joan held his face to the light from the hall chandelier. He looked like he’d been in a fight. The rims were caked with dry, sore skin and the left eye was hardly open, almost stuck shut. “Call a doctor,” she picked him up in her arms, “and McKinley,” she headed for the stairs, “and Douglas.”

She sat him on her knee, her arms around him. The first time he’d come back she hadn’t been able to let go of him at all. Now his visits were dropping into the familiarity of habit; it gnawed at her, she didn’t want to get used to it. She held him and kissed his head while the doctor leaned and inspected.

“Pink Eye.” The doctor took off his glasses.

“How long will it take to go down?”

“A week, perhaps. It’s an infection, not serious, but certainly jolly uncomfortable.”

“I know what Pink Eye is. Where would he have caught it?”

“From another child, I should imagine; perhaps playing in the park, some unsavoury bugs on a football, or—”

“Do you still go to the gardens, Ian?” Joan said.

“With Peel.” His voice was small.

“And does this Peel play football?” said the doctor.

“Peel is a housekeeper, my sister’s. It doesn’t matter.”

They bathed his eyes in a calming solution and he looked a little better, as if he’d been crying for days, but not as if he’d been punched. She read to him while Nanny Duncan unpacked his case and threw away any clothes they didn’t recognise. Peter Rabbit was his favourite of all the stories. He liked it when she said soporific, the bunnies so full of lettuce they fell asleep. Sometimes they’d say it at each other till they laughed, but today he was dozing off too, snug against her, warm, safe. She closed the book. She always skipped the part when the bunnies were trapped in the sack.

“Duncan,” she said softly, “use these pads again tomorrow, first thing and make sure he keeps his hands nice and clean.” She kissed him and tipped him off her knee into Nanny Duncan’s arms.

Pat and Douglas were in the drawing room.

“What are we going to do?” Joan lit a cigarette. Pat handed her a gin.

Douglas said, “We’re not up till November.”

She’d never known the courts would be so slow. A month to agree visitation, six months to get a hearing date and it had just been put back again. “He can’t go back like this. I won’t have it.”

“How could she send him?” said Pat.

“She had no choice,” said Douglas.