Reluctantly Alison accepted my offer to see her off. On the Piccadilly line to Heathrow, we hardly spoke. She was wearing an old sweatshirt she liked to sleep in, and had spoiled the soft shape of her haircut by pinning the sides. I read my paper. She kept her eyes on the other passengers and retrieved my suitcase when it slid down the aisle of the train.

At a restaurant in the departure lounge, I said: “I’m going to miss you.”

A hint of sarcasm: “You are?” She looked up from her bored study of the menu, glasses flashing. “The coast is clear now.”

I ignored that. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get home?” A pointless question, deserving of a shrug. I tried again. “What did you like best about London?”

Alison’s face with the hair pulled back was as round and foreign as the moon. “Can’t remember, offhand. I’ll make a list if you need to justify your expenses.”

I let the craving take me over, for Maddy’s lovely face, Maddy’s curious eyes, Maddy’s wit and goodwill. She would be laughing at the toddler at the next table grinding egg into his hair. She would ask what she’d been like at that age. I would repeat the stories she knew by heart. We would link arms on our way out. My yearning for her was monstrous and bodily and doomed. I was in two realities at once: with Maddy, and with this graceless stranger.

“You’re so angry, Alison.”

She was silent for a moment, unaccustomed to the forthrightness of others. “Angrier than anyone else? Angrier than you?”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But I suggest you get on top of it.”

“Oh, really?”

“Being outspoken doesn’t always serve you well. It could hold you back.”

Her voice trembled. “Is that so?”

“Sometimes,” I advised, “it’s best to keep your opinions to yourself.”

Blotches spread like a rash on her pale cheeks. “I’m not your daughter, you know!” She was glaring at me, around me, through me. “Did Maddy have to keep her opinions to herself?”

“That,” I said, my voice returning slow and cold, “was a nasty thing to say.”

Alison looked bewildered. “My mother kept her opinions to herself. See where it got her?”

“Where did it get her?”

“Stuck with my dad all those years. Miserable. Always will be.”

“Does that mean you have to be?”

The waiter appeared with his pad, but not before I had seen the tears standing in her eyes. Not knowing what else to do, we placed an order.

“Besides,” said Alison, when he’d gone, “I thought that’s what you liked about me.”

“What?”

“That I speak my mind.”

I was trying to take charge of my face.

“Sometimes I wish I didn’t,” she murmured. “You can’t take things back.”