“Well, yes, I grant you that, there’s no good age to be sleeping rough. But he’s not on the streets at present.”

“Not here, no. But where do you think he sleeps when he heads into the city for winter?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m fairly sure he doesn’t have a café owner in the city willing to let him camp out on her floor every night,” said John.

“I’m not disagreeing with you. I’d like to see Alfred somewhere safe and warm too, but it’s not as easy as just finding him somewhere to live, is it? Gemma said there’ve been attempts to house him before that haven’t worked out. We have to respect that Alfred is a complex man with complex needs.”

“At what point does respect become irresponsible?”

“What do you suggest?” asked Annie. “We can’t force him into housing! It’s more complicated than that.”

“It’s easy to be flippant until somebody finds him dead on the beach from pneumonia.”

“You’re talking as if Alfred is my responsibility,” said Annie.

“Not just yours. Mine. Everybody’s. Apathy is as dangerous as ignorance.”

“I am neither apathetic nor ignorant toward Alfred’s plight,” said Annie.

He held his hands up. “That came out wrong, that’s not what . . .”

“Do you know what?” said Annie. “I’m just about sick of men telling me how life is, or what they think my thoughts on a subject are. Thank you for your help today, but I can take it from here.”

She held out her hand to take the broom from John. John opened his mouth to speak, but Annie gave him a look that brooked no discussion. He sighed and handed over the broom.

“You’re impossible!” said John, and without another word, he picked his jacket from the hook by the door and left.

Damn, Annie thought. I guess the truce is over.

Chapter 55

When she got back up to the flat, she fed Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and got into her pajamas. She couldn’t settle. She tried watching television, drinking hot chocolate with brandy, and reading Lady Audley’s Secret to soothe herself, but nothing held her attention. She was even too fidgety for Tiggs to bother with her.

She hadn’t wanted to argue with John. He just seemed to push her buttons. She harrumphed as she raked over their disagreement. So far, though he was bullish and self-righteous, John’s only real crimes had been to seek enough money to look after an elderly aunt in her twilight years and to suggest that a sixty-something man shouldn’t be homeless. What had happened here, she surmised, was a classic case of transference; she was taking out her feelings of frustration and powerlessness with Max on John.